


Have You Ever Seen Blood in the Moonlight?

by DesMotsComme_Violence (TheFire_in_the_NightSky)



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Bloodplay, Brooding, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Creepy Merfolk, Despair, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Existential Angst, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Irish Folklore, Irish Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content, Suicidal Ideation, Telepathic Bond, Tragic Romance, Unconventional Relationship, Vampire Geoffrey McCullum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2020-06-04 20:36:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19428706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFire_in_the_NightSky/pseuds/DesMotsComme_Violence
Summary: A short story cycle depicting the growth between Reid and McCullum after the game's main storyline.*Will update as ideas come to me!*There is no over-arching plot here, folks, but the chapters do happen chronologically.  This is mainly a character-study, so technically, there is no true "finished" state to this story unless I run out of ideas or inspiration.





	1. No Matter How Lonely My Soul

_Dear Doctor, I have read your play,  
Which is a good one in its way,  
Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels,  
And drenches handkerchiefs like towels  
With tears that, in a flux of grief,  
Afford hysterical relief  
To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses,  
Which your catastrophe convulses.  
I like your moral and machinery;  
Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery!  
Your dialogue is apt and smart;  
The play's concoction full of art;  
Your hero raves, your heroine cries,  
All stab, and everybody dies;  
In short, your tragedy would be  
The very thing to hear and see_

\-- Lord George Gordon Byron, excerpt from "Dear Doctor, I Have Read Your Play"

* * *

A bouquet of wasted petals and its soundless fall upon dark, turned earth. Sparse little green fingers of grass beginning to finally reach through it. Cold stone beneath his bent knee, a gaze colder still at his back… Icy perhaps, but not uncaring, no. The smell of beasts lurking like carrion-scavengers, more dead than they. More desperate.

But at least most _skal_ are freed of their emotions.

Jonathan does not know if he expects some sort of poetic, religiously symbolic tears of blood to flow down over his cheeks. Regardless, he does not weep for his lost loved ones. Not iron, not salt. Perhaps he doesn’t deserve the luxury of fully mourning his family’s passing in the ways that humans – mortals – do. After all, it was his cruel tricks of death and this new “life” that brought them swiftly their own fates, unintentional or no.

“Come _on,_ Reid. It’s almost time.” 

Jonathan of course, is not the only one to feel the prick of personal unease amongst the broken and towering stonework-teeth of a cemetery; a place where the void that Death brings grows mass like a cancer, a physical reminder of interred memories. Geoffrey lingers, anxious– Jonathan's permanent peripheral shadow. His twin heartbeat in blood; his _progeny._

 _A little more time,_ Jonathan wants to urge as he trails his fingers over an engraved _M._ But, he knows his dear hunter quails more keenly from all things that bring their kind the most harm or render them weak and vulnerable. It has been Geoffrey’s area of skilled expertise to ferret this knowledge out and use it to his advantage for most of his life, after all– even now.

The sun's impending ascent behind the dreary cloud canopy of London’s sky still causes Geoffrey a nervous sort of agitation if they are not within a mile of one of their safehouses. Occasionally, Geoffrey will take Jonathan by surprise and depart for the Priwen headquarters; he is on the precipice of naming a successor, yes, but it seems more out of shame for what he now is than for a real practicality's sake. Apparently though, Geoffrey owns so much of his men’s respect that he is still welcome to room there should he ever be in need. Jonathan does not fault Geoffrey for missing the company of human life. They suspect nothing, the fools. It doesn’t stop Jonathan from worrying over the day they finally do, and the reckoning to follow.

But Geoffrey is beautiful in his ironic existence. Jonathan's eyes momentarily follow the man's restless pacing, the way preternatural grace has taken away a bit of the old, angry stomp from his long gate that was ever-present before Geoffrey was turned.

An oddity amongst the odd; a bogeyman hiding in plain sight, not unlike Jonathan himself. The proverbial wolves in sheeps’ clothing, the pair of them.

Creatures of deceit, indeed.

He bids a farewell and goodnight to Mary, and to his mother. A kiss from his fingertips to stone each, and each carrying another apology.

They only make it down a few paths before Geoffrey slows his confident stride. As per usual, he is ahead of Jonathan by a couple metres, playing the protective guard dog for their cortège of two.

When Jonathan is close enough, Geoffrey reaches out for him. No words exchanged, simply a gentle tug at his elbow. Jonathan lets himself go – removes his hands from his pockets as arms envelope him in a strong embrace, and it is so much different than that which he gave unto Geoffrey just a few months ago. There is no violence in this, only comfort. Only the swell of affection shared between them that passes like heat through a pane of glass.

 _I know. I still feel loss too, Jon._ Geoffrey's quiet thoughts in his head. His mouth, unmoving, pressed at Jonathan's cheek. It surprises him. And Jonathan should know Geoffrey still grieves too, for he has already learned the cause of his hunter’s vengeful, rancorous heart. Jonathan is thankful the words are not spoken aloud. It is enough that they are said at all.


	2. All the Sand at the Bottom of the Hourglass

_Your carcase for your age atones,_   
_And gives particular delight_   
_In hollows of your collar bones,_   
_And other places out of sight._   
_Your carcase certainly atones._

_A fig for those poor doting fools_   
_Who're melon-struck and pumpkin mad,_   
_Since I prefer your clavicles_   
_To those King Solomon once had._   
_A fig for such poor doting fools!_

_[...]By its voluptuous disdain_   
_Your bitter lip provokes our lust._   
_It's Eden's apple once again,_   
_Half is attraction, half disgust,_   
_In its voluptuous disdain._

_[...]Your burning skin is void of sweetness:_   
_Like an old soldier's it appears._   
_To sweat it never had the weakness_   
_More than your eyes could furnish tears._   
_And yet it has a kind of sweetness!_

\-- Charles Baudelaire, excerpts from "Le Monstre"

* * *

Ripples of the Thames lap at the walls of the canal like a shimmer of dark silk. Jonathan stares into the brackish depths from his perch upon the wall overlooking the waters, listening. He closes his eyes to let the sounds better form around him. A voice in the back of his mind dares him with the question of what would happen if he were to step off, let himself sink. But he knows it’s only his own voice now, just as he knows that he is too coward for the inchoate idea of a slow death by drowning. He has not even been “reborn” for a year, yet he is so very, very tired. 

For all Jonathan knows, he could plunge into that bituminous current and force saltwater into his now-useless lungs to no avail. He thinks back to the cold barrel of a revolver against his sternum and what good that did him.

Briefly, Jonathan wonders for how long Elisabeth felt the heat of the flames before they consumed her entirely. He watches the soft movement of the river like the pull of all the fight left in him, flowing ever on and away. Have other Ekons felt as he does, heavy with the dread of immortality and the guilt that festers along with it? A light breeze off the water slips through the material of his shirt beneath the tweed of his waistcoat. It makes the hairs on Jonathan’s forearms dance where his shirtsleeves are rolled, but his skin does not react; a chill does not prick across his shoulders nor down his spine. Some parts of him alive, others dormant – in stasis.

A lazy whistling, with no discernible melody, suddenly cuts through the quiet of Night. Jonathan could deny the relief he feels… he _could._

“Thinking about going for a dip, eh?” Though his voice holds mirth, Geoffrey’s expression is stern and knowing. Jonathan cants his head to watch his Progeny’s approach. Geoffrey’s stride is open and leisurely, arms swinging slow at his sides. The pallor of his face is a pale pink, and Jonathan can smell the skal blood speckling Geoffrey’s clothes, mingling in the unnecessary breaths he takes. The dark scent of opium smoke hangs around him like a wispy shadow.

Jonathan turns away to focus back on the water as he hears Geoffrey’s boot soles scuff to a stop upon the pavement. “Out on the prowl, dear hunter?” Jonathan asks by way of non-answer to the true meaning beneath Geoffrey’s veiled question. That is the unfortunate beauty in their bond – Geoffrey does not _have_ to ask, and neither does Jonathan, but they play at the courtesy of privacy now and again, even still.

“Ah, jealous I didn’t perhaps invite you to dinner, my _hunt saboteur?”_ Jonathan glances over his shoulder again to give Geoffrey a look of incredulity. “Mm… just reminiscing, I s’pose. Went for a bit of a stroll, you could say. Cleared my head.” He smiles, taps the side of his nose before dodging Jonathan’s gaze.

Jonathan sighs. “I know... You miss–”

 _“No,”_ Geoffrey says firmly. “My missing things’ve got nothing to do with nothing. And you’d do well to get that out of your head.” He points an accusatory finger at Jonathan.

“You forget,” Jonathan turns completely, putting his back to those murky, enticing waters. “I know the thoughts in _yours.”_

Geoffrey scoffs, shaking his head in clear exasperation. He approaches the wall, grabs Jonathan’s coat that was carefully draped over the side. “Leave it,” Geoffrey demands, jaw tight. He pats the side of Jonathan’s calf with his knuckles, then holds out his coat, giving it a little shake. “Now, come on, Jonny-boy. You'll catch your death out here.”

Jonathan raises a brow at the remark, but Geoffrey's playful smirk has him smiling down at the man in spite of his dour mood. 

He hops down from the wall, reluctantly letting Geoffrey help him shrug on his coat. “It is a rampant misconception, that is slowly being formally disproven, that the cold can _make_ one sick, actually. Truly, your immune system, and its responses to viral infection–”

Geoffrey sighs loudly with a slight roll of his eyes, claps Jonathan on the back before stepping away. “Aye, and I didn't come here to listen to you lecture me with your grand medical expertise, _doctor._ Not like I'll be spreading anything like that around, or anyone to me, in turn. Well, not exactly. Already been contaminated with an infection of the worst kind, y’see.” He rolls his shoulders, side-eyeing Jonathan with a sarcastic grin, but the words still sting, opening a little wider Jonathan's fissure of guilt.

“I _am_ sorry, Geoffrey…” he starts, letting his voice trail off quietly, perhaps hoping for an interjection that there's no longer anything to be forgiven. In the ensuing silence, Jonathan sinks to the ground, bringing his knees up and resting his weight against the wall with a heavy sigh. “I let my emotions – my _frustrations_ with you get the better of me. I have done _no better_ than that which was done unto me. Stripping you away of choice. In that moment, becoming the very monster I swore to you I wasn't. I gave you every reason to truly hate me, when that is the last thing I ever wanted from you. I simply wanted some bloody _understanding_ between us.”

Geoffrey sits beside him with a groan. Their shoulders brush briefly. “Would you stop, ye morose bastard… Fucking hell...”

“It wasn't right of me to take that from you… especially not when I don't even know how to be a proper, informed teacher for you.” Jonathan can’t bring himself to look his fledgling in the eye.

“You tell me not to worry over it any longer,” Jonathan starts in again with a rush before Geoffrey can argue. “yet I cannot help feeling like I must… _atone_ for what I have done – what I've done to those closest to me, the pain I have caused since I awoke in that mass grave, Geoffrey. My own sister… my mother… It happened differently for each of them, but I drove them to both madness and their graves with what I am. I failed Elisabeth. And Swansea, he–” Jonathan watches Geoffrey shift uncomfortably from his periphery. He diverts back to the issue at hand. “I have taken away your life as you once knew it, _of course_ you miss things. How can you stand to be around me, how can you sit there and tell me to drop it when I have taken away your humanity?”

Jonathan feels keenly his own loneliness, feels Geoffrey’s bleeding at his edges, too. The man has tried to blend in more these days, sneaking around what Jonathan can only assume were his old haunts from before; trying desperately to hold onto the memory of being alive while he can still cling to the taste of it.

“Yeah, well I'm the one that'll 'ave to deal with all your bleedin’, tetchy shite every night, so I'd rather you just let it go, Jonathan. Make it easier on us both if you just let it go…” Geoffrey pulls out a cigarette case and lighter from his coat pocket. The lid of the case flashes in the moonlight as he pops it open. He plucks out a cigarette and briefly rolls it between his thumb and middle finger before bringing it to his lips.

“Have you, then?” Jonathan looks pointedly to the cigarette between Geoffrey’s lips as the man’s wrist flicks once to open the lighter; a little catch of flame, then another flick of the wrist to snuff it. “Let it go, put it behind you?”

Geoffrey nods once emphatically, seemingly more out of impatience than actual enthusiasm. He pockets the lighter and case; a puff of smoke as he smiles around the cigarette in his mouth. “Care for one? How rude of me not to ‘ave asked.” Jonathan can’t help but chuckle and shakes his head. He doesn’t know the point in smoking now, wonders if it even does anything for Geoffrey past easing his adjustment with more human posturing.

“Ahh, what's done is done,” Geoffrey continues after taking a quick drag of the cigarette. “I'm trying to make my own peace with it. I can still cut the head off a leech, so no real harm done, I suppose.” Jonathan isn’t at all surprised he still uses those terms for vampires. “I don't feel sorry for it just because I’m one of those fucks now, and I don't gotta try so hard to lop a skull clean off a sewer beast, which is nice.” His smirk is wicked, then falls into something a little sombre. “Indeed, it’s hard to hold back. That’s why I couldn’t be around my boys anymore, promoted ol’ Carter. They’d have noticed. I gave them quite a bit of shite, but they’re a sharp lot, and... they’ll be alright. And if I should run into the end of one of their blades or find myself with a bolt to the head, I know I’ll have deserved it.” He turns to look at Jonathan and tips his chin up at him. “Going to take some fashion cues from you, though and get myself a fancy pair of leather gloves.” He laughs when Jonathan looks back at him, bemused. “Ah, but that orichalcum powder’s a bitch to handle now, ain’t it?”

Jonathan must admit, he’s a little taken aback by Geoffrey keeping his word to carry on being a vampire hunter, even despite leaving the Guard.

“A man is nothing without his word or his honour,” Geoffrey answers his thoughts. “My father used to tell Ian and me when we were boys, back before…” Jonathan watches the end of Geoffrey’s cigarette glow as he takes a long pull from it. The thumb of his free hand rubs nervously over the knuckles of his fingers. Smoking does nothing for Geoffrey, but he wishes it did; wishes the smoke burned in his nostrils and in his chest. Jonathan decides against commenting on those little personal thoughts. At the end of the day, a placebo is still a placebo.

Jonathan looks up towards the hazy night sky reflecting the amber glow of lantern lights nearby. He exhales because it feels right to. “And what an honourable man and doctor I have become.”

“Bah! You’re more than that now, though. More than the man you _were._ You are a bloody corker, Jonathan Emmet Reid, I’ll tell you that.” Jonathan watches as Geoffrey stamps out his cigarette. “This is but one path for us. We have all the power to choose a new one, should we feel so compelled. I realise that now.” Geoffrey looks at him, openly and honestly. It is true, they have now near-infinite options laid out before them like the spread of prophetic cards upon some mystic’s table.

“And do you, Geoffrey McCullum? Do you feel a new compulsion in your Rebirth into Darkness?”

“You asked why I’m still around you, after what you made me. Perhaps that is my new compulsion. Perhaps it is _you_ that compels me.”

Steepling his fingers over his knees, Jonathan swallows thickly. He supposes it is Geoffrey that keeps him from stepping over that edge. He can’t put a voice to it, so he makes sure his thoughts are loud, that there is no mistaking their clarity. A little furrow forms between Geoffrey’s brows, an understanding in his pale eyes.

“Are you lonely, Geoffrey?” Jonathan doesn’t know where he finds the bravery to ask.

Geoffrey shifts a little closer until their sides are nearly pressed together. “I reckon not with you, no,” he answers on a whisper. “I think something always pulled me to you, but not your _vampire magicks.”_ The last couple words are said with Geoffrey’s usual venomous disdain. “I think I would have liked to know you before all this horseshite.”

“Perhaps you would have been the thorn in my side, even then.” Jonathan smiles sadly.

A hand at his face then, a calloused thumb brushing where Jonathan knows he bears a scar from errant shrapnel. “Perhaps. But here we are, _macushla.”_

“But here we are,” Jonathan agrees.

He wonders at the term Geoffrey uses, thinks maybe he has heard it before in passing from other Irish tongues in crowded places.

 _My pulse,_ Geoffrey tells him wordlessly as he leans in. Reflexively, Jonathan lets his eyes fall shut. His heart hammers and he reaches out with his senses to feel the deluge of blood that washes rapidly through Geoffrey's veins. He knows their hearts were doomed to beat in tandem once he gave Geoffrey his blood, but Jonathan needs that reminder now more than ever; he made the right choice in the wrong way.

Their noses bump a little awkwardly at first until Geoffrey tilts his head further, and Jonathan's blood sings when their mouths meet. Geoffrey's hand moves to cradle the back of his head, and Jonathan presses in further, parting his lips for the tentative curl of Geoffrey's tongue against his mouth. 

There is heat. There is cold, no longer. It is revelatory.

In a blink, Jonathan has Geoffrey pushed to the ground on his back, the dim lantern light illuminating his surprise before Jonathan is upon him again. In unending movement, Geoffrey is pulling him down, rough and greedy; their kiss like bloody violence with the way scarlet begins to spill over their chins. His thighs welcome the easy roll of Jonathan’s narrow hips.

This is heat. This is grand conflagration, self-immolation at its finest.

Geoffrey breaks the kiss to bark out a laugh. “So, what's the craic, Jon?” he asks, voice slightly slurred with lust, though his fingers fumble with loosening Jonathan’s tie as if with unconscious effort. Geoffrey knows exactly what this is. “Thought a man like you…” he lays a quick, rough kiss to the side of Jonathan’s neck. He knows there will be blood on his collar. “might have a little more class,” Geoffrey murmurs in his ear.

Johnathan’s hands trail down Geoffrey’s sides, stopping to tug the ends of his shirt from his trousers. “And I am no longer _just a man,_ as you've said.”

A rasping wail shakes them apart, then another, closer to Jonathan’s left. Gunshots crack through the air. Yellow-white light.

 _“That’s right, you fuckin’ cunts! That burns, don’t it?!”_ They hear boots hit the pavement, the drop of a body. _Priwen._

“Shit!” Geoffrey quickly wipes the blood from his mouth on his coat sleeve as he scrambles out from under Jonathan to the tune of another skal’s retching nearby. Jonathan gets to his feet and uses tendrils of his preternatural senses to reach out, looking for the beating of hearts, undead and alive. Two skals and two guardsmen - one of whom is rounding stacks of crates, headed their way.

“What the _fuck,_ McCullum?! It’s like that, is it?! The bloody leech-doctor, aye?” A man, appearing not much younger than Jonathan or McCullum skids to a halt in front of them, eyes wide until they’re narrowing in disgust as that angry gaze locks onto Jonathan, then again to Geoffrey. He takes in the rumple of their clothes. The man raises his rifle with a deep scowl. “That why you always held us back off his tail, huh? It’s ‘coz you were sweet on ‘im, wasn’t it? A traitor to the Guard _and_ a fucking shirtlifter to boot!”

 _“Bankes…”_ Geoffrey warns, lifting his own gun suddenly. His arm is outstretched, and from Jonathan’s angle, it seems as though Geoffrey means to take aim at the guardsman’s head. “You know not what you’re speakin’ of. And Dr. Reid’s done more for London than you know, so if you’d be so kind as to _back off.”_

 _Geoffrey,_ Jonathan tries to silently calm his Progeny. He wants to reach for him physically, but knows he’ll only be shrugged off.

“Back off? Back off?!” The man, Bankes, turns his head to shout, _“Oi, Shaw!_ Over here! We got ol’ McCullum and–” A shot rings out as a bullet from Geoffrey’s pistol lodges itself in the face of a shambling skal some couple metres behind Bankes. Bankes jumps to the side, face gone pale, mouth agape at the close call from both bullet and creature alike.

Geoffrey paints the air with his shadowy form, lunging to shove Bankes out of the way and rush towards the still-standing skal.

“Oh, Christ! Y-you’re one of ‘em now!” Bankes’s voice is hysterical in its disgust and terror. He crawls backwards, scurrying like a rat until his back hits the wall of the canal where Jonathan sat with Geoffrey just moments ago. Another gunshot, another body hitting the ground with a heavy _thump._

Jonathan watches as Geoffrey approaches the writhing skal, steps across its throat. Watching on, Jonathan is hypnotised by the easy, efficient deadliness of his fledgling. The skal tries to push Geoffrey’s foot off, clawing desperately at his boot and pant leg, before Geoffrey ends it with two more shots. The skal gurgles a few seconds longer, then it’s over.

There is still the matter of the other Priwen guard.

Jonathan shadow-steps until he reaches the second skal. She seethes with rage in front of him, arms outstretched at her sides, a blood curdling scream leaving her chest. Jonathan hardly has time to defend himself when she takes a swipe at his torso, then blinks away – the burn of a bullet suddenly entering his left shoulder being quite the distraction.

Claws and fangs bared, Jonathan growls and rushes the skal, making an upward, sweeping blow to empty her throat of its oesophagus, then turns his attentions on the hunter, barely feeling arsed to shake the viscous blood from his hand. The man pops off another shot, and Jonathan catches it above a floating rib on his right as he dodges left. Shaw swears beneath his breath, cocking the bolt of his repeater with shaking hands while Jonathan continues stalking towards him. He can feel the blood pouring down his side, his hip.

Before he can get yet another shot off, Jonathan presses the hunter against the wall of the warehouse before them. His head smacks hard enough to daze the man momentarily. Normally, Jonathan would of course feel terrible about this, worry about a concussion or cerebral contusion, but this only gives him an upperhand for what he means to do next.

With his forearm braced against the hunter’s chest, he stares into defiant, brown eyes. _“Shaw,”_ Jonathan bellows his surname. _“You saw and heard nothing of import here tonight. You ran into McCullum and he helped the two of you take down a few skals. Like old times. These docks are clear now, your work is done in this location. Take Bankes and move on.”_ The man nods, pupils dilated wide. He nearly slumps to the ground when Jonathan backs away.

Jonathan can only hope Geoffrey has handled Bankes in the same manner. His Progeny inherited Jonathan’s talent for mesmerism with frightening success.

He finds Geoffrey standing over Bankes, the other man seemingly unable to scramble away fast enough to join his comrade.

“Did you take care of it?” Jonathan asks, once he knows the guardsman is out of earshot. The scene is quiet again with the leave of rapid footfall, a gate screeching in the distance.

Geoffrey nods solemnly. “Of course I did.” Grey-blue eyes look him up and down. Jonathan knows what he notices before Geoffrey voices his concern. “I can smell it. Your blood and gunpowder.”

“Left shoulder. It’ll be fine once I extract the bullet.” But Jonathan winces slightly when he tries rolling that same shoulder. Geoffrey scowls. “And right flank, but it was a through-and-through.”

“When did you last feed? And you know you can’t lie to me, Reid. You’re losin’ too much blood too quickly.”

 _“Truly_ fed? A mugger. Last Sunday.”

A small, almost imperceptible smile curves Geoffrey’s mouth – he’s annoyed, not amused. He shakes his head. “Ah, you feckin’ Good Samaritan, you. C’mon, let’s go get you cleaned up proper then. And I’ll give you a _real_ drink, Jon.”

Jonathan doesn’t have to ask, he obeys because he knows the heat in Geoffrey’s eyes now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I've just always adored the words, "macushla" & "acushla" so, so much. And I realise it may not _literally_ mean "pulse/my pulse," but that's just what Geoffrey felt like telling Jonathan in the moment.
> 
> Thank you for those keeping up with and enjoying this!!


	3. Grim, All This.

_O' troubled soul, suffocating lips upon me  
That spear in my ribs, the eagle swallowing my liver  
Why must you kiss my pouring spirit–  
As once my blood met thine?  
Pale scarlet and yours now, possess’d as thee is to me  
The gift of Night beds the well-fated crime  
Of blush'd cheeks and quickened hearts  
Doomed ever to repeat within ill Providence  
Woe to mine inexorable goodness;  
'Twas a mutual parting_

\-- excerpt from my Vampyr-inspired poem, "[Dear My Agony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407222)"

* * *

They make it to Jonathan’s home with little commotion, having mostly kept to rooftops and scaffolding when they could. Jonathan had witnessed a change in the set of Geoffrey’s jaw and shoulders each time they saw a Priwen patrol – though they were fewer these days – scattered in tactical formations along the darkened streets as they passed like dark wisps overhead. He’d felt a sense of betrayal emanating from Geoffrey before those emotions were locked up tight. Though it was not a sense of desertion from his men, no. But a sense that Geoffrey himself was the betrayer; the trickster devil hiding in their midst; a loathsome creature lying in wait with its cloak of deceit held safe in the bosom of nightfall. Jonathan had known better than to pick at that scabbing wound.

Ascending to the balcony with ease, Jonathan tries to ignore the tight pull in his chest when he glances towards the windows of his late mother’s vacant room before Geoffrey leads them through the doors to his own bedroom. Geoffrey makes haste in lighting the place as if it is his own, and a warm, yellow incandescence spills across the walls, the furniture; the deep, hunter green of Jonathan’s bedspread.

“I don’t know where you keep all your supplies, you’ll have to rummage that out yerself, I’m afraid,” Geoffrey grumbles as he pulls Jonathan’s desk chair close to the side of the bed, eyes still roaming the personal space that belonged to Jonathan’s younger self.

Jonathan smiles. “I am sure I’ll manage. Somehow.”

And that he does, leaving the room to quickly scrub his hands and collect the necessities, which includes his small spare case of surgical tools. Jonathan’s teeth are on edge with each motion as he tries to ignore the pain of his slowly healing wounds, and all the while, Geoffrey sits on his bed, thrumming with quiet frustration and anticipation. He takes one of the linen towels Jonathan procured from the washroom, laying it down next to him, folding it once, setting a kidney dish and forceps atop it with surprisingly practised movements. Jonathan is observing the fidgeting of a nervous man.

“My desk would make a more stable area to do this,” he suggests.

Geoffrey gives him a bit of a sneer. “And we both can’t sit over there.” He nods to the chair in front of him to clarify his meaning. “Now sit, _doctor._ Then be useful and hand me the antiseptic.”

“Do you mean to take care of me, Geoffrey?” Jonathan says with a chuckle in his voice as he hands Geoffrey the bottle of carbolic acid solution. Geoffrey splashes a little into the kidney dish. As he works through the buttons on his waistcoat, Jonathan wonders if any of the sterilisation or precautionary measures against germs truly matter, here and now. He feels a curious flush in his cheeks when he grasps his already loosened tie, mind switching quickly to thoughts of Geoffrey's fingers at his throat but an hour or so ago.

“I can do more than that,” Geoffrey murmurs, his gruff Irish lilt catching on each word and snapping Jonathan’s wandering thoughts back to the present. Jonathan is curious if Geoffrey can actually _feel_ the excited spike in his heart rate. “But ‘m afraid I might not have the best bedside manner. I’m no nursie, Jonathan.” He straightens his shoulders as he rolls his sleeves, giving Jonathan a smug grin.

Jonathan peels off his shirt carefully, taking his seat before Geoffrey. The fabric clings stubbornly to the sticky blood on his right side and pain radiates halfway down Jonathan’s back from his shoulder blade with the movement. Well, that certainly isn’t a good sign. “But you know what you are doing? Or do you need my… informed guidance?” he teases to cover a grimace.

Geoffrey stares into his eyes coldly for a moment, mouth back to its usual hard line. Belatedly, Jonathan realises the error of his choice in words, and Geoffrey feels his remorse, feeding mild consolement back to him. That would be the first time Geoffrey has received an offer of guidance of any sort from Jonathan. Since Geoffrey’s turning, they have remained an odd, lonesome duo of sorts with an even odder reliance on one another. For a few blinks, Geoffrey averts his eyes before meeting Jonathan’s again. His scowl is softer, made more from concern than anger.

“Oh, turn around, you eejit.” He twirls a finger in front of Jonathan’s face. “My surgical skills are sound enough, what with all we’ve had to do and teach ourselves in the Guard. Had medics come and go too much for better paying jobs or the occasional yellow’d belly when they finally saw a real-live blood drinker for themselves.” Geoffrey shakes his head once with a slight grimace. “I don’t– _didn’t_ run the most orthodox of garrisons in London, exactly. Men try to be brave, they do... Even lost one doctor to the war...” his voice trails off, but the feelings of regret do not.

Jonathan doesn't get up to resituate himself as asked. Instead, he studies Geoffrey's face and the emotion he tries to hide. Jonathan scoots his chair forward a fraction, letting his legs become entirely bracketed by Geoffrey’s. He braces his hands on the sides of Geoffrey’s thighs, just shy of his hips, and bends forward to press the crown of his head into Geoffrey’s broad chest, listening to his heartbeat. Jonathan wants to feel it against him, the steady pump of blood turning over into a quiet, nervous thresh of a rhythm.

The surprising warmth of Geoffrey's hand slides over Jonathan's back, reaching the tender edges of the bullet wound. The fingers of his other hand tangle gently within Jonathan's hair, petting at his scalp. A grounding, innocent affection that Jonathan refuses to count on as something more substantial– or as anything he should so deserve.

Geoffrey’s beard prickles the skin of Jonathan's shoulder as he rests his chin there. “Look at the state of you, Jon.” The hand over Jonathan's back leaves to swirl and tap the forceps into the antiseptic solution within the dish. Geoffrey’s fingers then press on either side of the wound before the sharp bite of seeking metal burrows and digs.

Jonathan punches out a breath, an automatic response his body cannot shake, even in its death. It shouldn’t hurt this much. He can take the pain, but something is wrong beyond just the entry wound.

He gathers his cloudy thoughts, concentrates past the pain to just the _feel_ of it. The bullet shattered. Yes, it shattered and Geoffrey isn’t going to be able to dig it out.

“Geoffrey,” Jonathan says his name with something like an exhale and Geoffrey stops immediately, hands hovering. “I need you to– I need you to press down along the inner curve of my shoulder blade.” He senses Geoffrey’s hesitation. _Please, you won’t make it worse. Believe me, a gunshot wound or two is not enough to put me down._

_Please, trust me._

“You are…” But the sarcastic, mean-spirited remark Geoffrey had trickles away as he uses two fingers to trail even pressure down Jonathan’s shoulder. Geoffrey nearly gives a preemptive apology before Jonathan can let out his hiss of pain.

“Shattered medial border,” Jonathan mumbles to himself. The condition of the bullet was no longer his only concern. He looks up to see Geoffrey quirking a perplexed, scarred brow at him. “Ah, the bullet went deep enough to hit and fragment the outer edge of my scapula– I, my uhm–”

“Your shoulder blade. Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Not completely uneducated, you know, Reid. I'm even known to enjoy a good book or two now and again.” Geoffrey huffs at him. “So where does that leave us, then?” Geoffrey’s arms are placating and soothing along Jonathan’s biceps.

“The bullet also fragmented, I believe. And the pieces themselves are likely too deep to extract now.” Jonathan scrubs a hand over his face. The strength of vampire bone and tissue is a whisper of a curiosity from the back of his mind.

“But you know what will fix it, aye,” states Geoffrey. His tone is matter-of-fact and a touch scolding; annoyed anticipation colouring his lined face as he waits for Jonathan's imminent refusal.

Jonathan diverts the unspoken suggestion in gauche fashion. “We can hardly just wrangle a skal up here, Geoffrey. No matter that they are so few in number, now.” He smiles, and it's tight and unfeeling. “And I won't have you wandering the streets and back alleys, waiting for some ne’er-do-well to stumble into your path.” Jonathan lets his smile melt into a worried grimace. “We don't have the time for it, frankly.”

“No, we don't have the time for it.” Impassivity always made Geoffrey look younger, a little more his age. But now, that unflinching stare unnerves Jonathan. Geoffrey’s thoughts are guarded well. 

They both sit in contemplative silence for a minute or two, until finally, it is like a curtain has opened on Geoffrey's visage; his brow furrows deeply, mouth pursed in thought. He opens his mouth, but Geoffrey seems to pull himself up short. He cocks his head, inquisitive and dog-like before he ultimately finds the words he is looking for. They come out in an unsure sigh. “Drink from me, Jon,” he says, as if he were merely asking Jonathan to accompany him to the Turtle for a nip. _“Do it.”_

Jonathan glares at him dubiously. He hasn’t tasted Geoffrey’s blood since they fought to near-death at Pembroke months and months ago. He has gone without it for close to a year; that strong, violent thrum that was already tainted with something otherworldly that night, despite Geoffrey’s intact, rabid human nature. Jonathan can’t fathom what it would be like to drink from Geoffrey now; now that their blood has mingled and Geoffrey owns the same amount of power throughout his body – in his veins – as Jonathan. 

Geoffrey takes Jonathan’s chin in hand, turning his face this way and that slightly. For just a moment, Jonathan lets his eyelids fall shut, opening them to eyes mercifully clearer than his.

“Afraid, my penitent blood drinker?”

Sparing Geoffrey a scoff, Jonathan answers him acidly, “I don’t want to risk the temptation. _You know this._ You already know what I think of it, Geoffrey.” It was true; they had discussed the potential dangers of it, how it could set the precarious nature of Jonathan’s avid hunger alight.

_Take only from the evil-doer._

“Can the Sad Saint read your innermost thoughts as well, Jonathan?” With the nonsequitur, Geoffrey's gentle grip on Jonathan's jaw moves up to cup the side of his face, thumb reaching over to brush a line down between Jonathan's brows, then across.

“No, he can't.” Jonathan's voice is hoarse, his throat dry. He’s feeling weaker as the minutes tick on. He studies Geoffrey's face: each line, each scar made shallower and neater by the gift Jonathan forced onto him, and every capillary made more apparent. “Sean is not my Progeny, as you are. It isn't the same. And I don't know the thoughts within his head, either.”

Geoffrey smiles softly, just a quick upturn of one corner of his mouth, but there is a shard of envy-green in his blue eyes. His hand moves from Jonathan's face, only to have his knuckles graze down Jonathan's cheek, following the line of his beard. Geoffrey's thumb presses against Jonathan's lips. “If I didn't know you, I would dare to say you've got a taste for the blood of priests, my dear doctor.”

Moving his head to the side just enough to displace Geoffrey's thumb, Jonathan says, “You _don't_ know me... not really.” And Jonathan already knows it is the truest lie before the words finish leaving his throat.

“Ah, but I _do,_ Jonathan,” Geoffrey calmly argues. He pushes his thumb into Jonathan's mouth, pressing it to the point of a lower eyetooth. Metal, molten, and sweet and red drips over and beneath Jonathan's tongue. He lets out a breath that is very nearly a moan. “Know you better than I could ever possibly dream to know anyone. You gave that to me as well, with your ‘Judas kiss.’”

All Jonathan is of a mind to do is glare daggers at Geoffrey from beneath heavy eyelids, trying his damnedest not to suck on the digit in his mouth. Geoffrey’s skin tastes of saltpetre and charcoal. Jonathan slowly flicks his tongue against the tiny cut on the pad of Geoffrey’s thumb.

“I know you're wondering what a full-on drink would be like. Would it be akin to the times you must taste yourself, when you really need it – _hurt for it_ _–_ or be no different than any other high-born _Ekon’s_ blood you ‘ave drained?” Geoffrey leans his elbow on one knee, cradles his chin in his free hand with the stalest look on his face. “Well, tell me Jonny, what is it, then?” He removes his thumb, lets it linger hesitantly between Jonathan's lips with a smear of his blood.

“Give me more, and I’ll tell you exactly what it’s like.”

With short, swift movement, Geoffrey leans in closer and grips the sides of Jonathan's face a little roughly. “I'll tell you this. To taste you is better than breathing in any intoxicating smoke, better than the best Irish whisky from the highest shelf. Better than gettin’ off.” He pulls the scarf from around his neck, pushes his sloppy collar open.

Jonathan lunges the short distance to the warmth of Geoffrey's neck. And this is it. This is the sum of his fears: needing Geoffrey, and it coming as easily as it once was to breathe air into his lungs; not just the current mockery of it, but real and _true_ life in necessary motion.

Piercing the flesh pressed between his lips, his mouth, is as involuntary as the blinking of an eye, as monotonous as a yawn. But it is what comes _after_ that is the full-body jolt he feels with every muscle that tenses, every forceful swallow of the truest red Jonathan has ever come to know.

This is his nature now, and he lets Geoffrey feel every ounce of their sin.

In numb awareness, Jonathan knows Geoffrey is taking off his coat, his shirt; button by button. He thinks he hears the ripping of a seam or two. Perhaps he hears himself tearing open Geoffrey's throat. 

“That's it,” Geoffrey whispers against Jonathan's hair. Jonathan can feel bone mending, his skin knitting fully closed on his side, and muscle tissue swallowing the bullet fragments in his shoulder like little rotten pills.

Geoffrey groans, “Better than fucking, aye?”

At that, Jonathan pulls back. And it’s strange, Geoffrey’s pupils are like pinpricks in the unnatural steelyness of his irises instead of being dilated wide like he’d expect. Jonathan gives him one more cursory glance then stands. 

Quiet clack of heel on the parquet floor, muffled on the large area rug, again and again. Jonathan paces in long strides. He doesn't look up at Geoffrey until he stops, gripping the backrest of the chair. Polished wood creaking in Jonathan's grasp is the only sound in the room as Geoffrey stares back at him, waiting. Jonathan thinks about forcing out something that resembles a frustrated sigh, but doesn't much feel like expending the energy for it. “McCullum _– Geoffrey –_ what _am_ I to you?” He licks his lips. 

_Metal, and molten, and red._

He gets no answer, or perhaps he does when Geoffrey rises from the bed, kicks aside the chair and grabs hold of Jonathan to kiss him, so much hungrier than the last time.

“Do you make me do this? Are you making me feel these things, driving me mad?” Geoffrey asks with the punctuation of another vehement kiss. “You'd convinced me you only feed from evil, Jonathan. I’ve been made to see the length of my life, forward and back, in this irony, and now you know it. _You know_ I'm no good. Not in the eyes of any god, anymore. And now, there's no hope for my soul.”

Jonathan's claws are in Geoffrey's bare back before he even realises it, and Geoffrey _does_ sigh, a groaning, relieved sound from the pit of his stomach. Jonathan's pushed against a narrow, clear space along the far wall. There is a fire in Geoffrey's eyes like he might throttle him before Jonathan tugs him by the waist of his trousers to bring him close once more.

While bringing his arm up to cradle the back of Jonathan's head, Geoffrey latches onto his still-sore shoulder. _So drink,_ he urges from within Jonathan’s head, and Jonathan moves to sink his fangs into the meat of Geoffrey's bicep in turn.

All of the pain in Jonathan's body subsides to the healing elixir of Geoffrey's blood absorbing into his; it falls away to let Jonathan feel the singular, delicious ache of the fangs digging into his own flesh. His bloodstream is awash with the power that lurks inside Geoffrey. The immense mutualism between them is nearly overwhelming.

Jonathan makes a low, deeply satisfied sound in his chest and repositions his lips against Geoffrey's arm, feeling the smooth muscle there bulge beneath his mouth with every pulse of blood over his tongue. Geoffrey pulls his mouth away from Jonathan with a gasp and presses his hips forward to move against Jonathan's. The wet slide of his blood on Geoffrey's lips makes every lazy kiss up Jonathan's neck slick and messy. Geoffrey rolls his hips forward and Jonathan unconsciously meets him in kind.

There is a strange, full, whining, scrape coming from above Jonathan's head. He reluctantly stops short his drink to glance upwards, following the line of Geoffrey's reddening forearm, then his hand braced upon the wall…

But Geoffrey's hand has become monstrous, shadow-dark claws digging long, jagged marks into the wall. Jonathan shrugs his bloodied shoulder to grab Geoffrey's attention from where he's gone back to lapping and kissing around the small wound he’s made there.

“What– ?” Geoffrey's voice is groggy as he lifts his head, and there's a flame of annoyance to his narrowed eyes until he sees the disapproving look on Jonathan's face.

Again, Jonathan glances up towards Geoffrey’s hand. “You’ll have to forgive my interruption, but… We can't really go tearing apart the house.”

Tiny pieces of plaster crumble beside Jonathan's head as Geoffrey drags his clawed hand downwards one more time. There's a smugness to the curve of his mouth while he eyes his handiwork at ruining the bedroom wall. Jonathan levels an unimpressed glare at him.

Rolling his eyes, Geoffrey grits out, “I’ll buy you a fecking painting. _God's heart, Jonathan...”_ before taking Jonathan's face in his hands to sear his mouth with a kiss that is all heat and no pretense.

Eventually, they make a stumbling path to Jonathan’s bed. Each time Geoffrey pulls away from kissing Jonathan, there is a transparent sort of bewilderment set in his eyes. As if he cannot believe what his own body desires of him, or perhaps what it desires of Jonathan. This close, Jonathan takes notice of, for the first time, a very small scar just below the dipping meeting point of Geoffrey’s clavicle bones. Shiny, pinkened flesh in the shape of a crucifix hidden beneath the start of dark, wiry hair.

Jonathan ducks his head to place a kiss there, then once more over Geoffrey’s frantic heart. _Do you believe you are damned for_ this, _my Progeny?_

 _Perhaps I am a damned thing for a great many reasons,_ Geoffrey’s fingers grip Jonathan’s hair, but do not impede his downward exploration of Geoffrey’s body. _I suppose… what is one more? Just another sin to add to my repertoire._

Jonathan smiles and speaks aloud, fingers popping the buttons of Geoffrey’s fly. “No one and nothing – no man or god or law – should preside over who we find love in.”

“That is mighty idealistic of you, Jon. Doesn’t change that people, _my men,_ would talk if they found out. Want both our hides for it, too. It is bad enough we are what we are without...” Geoffrey is quiet again until Jonathan peels his trousers over his hips, his thighs. “And I don’t love you...”

Ignoring the comment, and having no hard feelings for Geoffrey speaking it in honesty, Jonathan begins to drag his mouth along Geoffrey’s inner thighs, working his way up one hip bone. He noses the hard, shallow cut of muscle there set between an arterial beat and a soft, thin layer of fat.

It is a natural thing, made unnatural by what they are. They are men; they are hunter and prey, both; they are creatures of blood. That blood still pumps and pools southward to the hungry Hell of their bodies. Jonathan feels it in the way Geoffrey's cock twitches when he takes him into his mouth, his nerves and senses directing his hands over every tributary lead of veinwork beneath Geoffrey's flesh. A red-marbled map to follow, with a ghostly heartbeat as his compass; Geoffrey, his true north, no matter how crooked the path.

And how, _how_ did it come to this ironic end?

Both of Geoffrey’s hands are on either side of Jonathan’s head, fingertips digging gently into the close crop of his hair over his ears. He groans out a repeat of obscenities until Jonathan pulls off him. Jonathan only stops sucking him off to bite down softly along the space between Geoffrey’s hip and groin to take his own pleasure in the salt of Geoffrey’s skin. It’s just enough to make Geoffrey flinch, to draw thin tendrils of blood down his skin that Jonathan does not let escape onto the bedclothes. When he climbs back up to Geoffrey’s mouth, their kiss is frenetic and filthy, laced with pungent, delicious iron.

Geoffrey lets him go from his arms, from the bed with a hesitance Jonathan pretends not to notice. He quickly finds a jar of Vaseline and places it on his bedside table, the glass bottom making its quiet _thud_ known in the silence of the room. Undressing fully, Jonathan watches Geoffrey unlace and remove his boots, then kick his trousers off the rest of the way. Arms welcome his body back in almost eager fashion.

Jonathan moves to settle down beside Geoffrey, facing him. He doesn't address the slight apprehension or fear echoing out from his Progeny. Jonathan’s simply sure to distract from both by catching Geoffrey’s attention and mouth with his own once more. Geoffrey’s hands are guided by Jonathan’s, and he tells Jonathan he’s never taken a man because he was never queer; Jonathan doesn't say he's never had a man in _this_ bed before, nor does he make mention of the lonesome sneaking around he'd done before the war in between ultimately failed attempts with the fairer sex.

Thoughts of how they’d be “dealt with” if word got out about their nature, coupled with their nature towards one another, fills the space between their bodies as Geoffrey turns Jonathan onto his side, away from him now. Those same thoughts die so very quickly inside Geoffrey's mind with a kiss placed upon Jonathan’s nape, then his shoulder. The tips of his fangs scrape in mock threat. Finally, Geoffrey’s hand trails heavy over Jonathan's hip until he's exploring downwards with a surer touch to stroke at Jonathan's rigid cock; his wrist twisting in near-perfect rhythm.

Flesh gives way under the bite of teeth, blood pools, but is not wasted on Geoffrey's tongue. His fingers map their way to the small of Jonathan's back, further down so he can feel the press and fullness of two of Geoffrey's slickened fingers taking him slowly.

Both of their bodies arch and bow when Geoffrey’s cock pushes into Jonathan at last. A contented hum resonates through Jonathan’s chest and he feels a flutter in Geoffrey’s against his back as he rocks forward. Just as they have fought as comrades, they fuck not as though they are of two bodies or souls, but as if they were stitched together, embroidered with the same curse using one profane thread.

The pull of his blood to Geoffrey's throat makes Jonathan light-headed. Perhaps it's too much after the injuries he’s sustained. Perhaps that is part of Geoffrey's plan for him. Jonathan thinks he's prepared to die by this man's hand now, with his fangs and the length of him buried deep; a twisted give and take that may have always been meant to be as such. Like two swords of Damocles, maybe they had been fated to be each other’s own punishments for lives they did not yet know they’d live; a love that comes as an unforeseen, fatal blow. 

Family tragedy, war, brutal epidemics, Ireland, and England… it was London’s evening that had been what ultimately changed them irreparably, and entwined them eternally.

Jonathan removes Geoffrey's arm from its place around his waist, mouths at his wrist; tongue tasting the soft pump of the artery tucked beneath thin skin, muscle, and tendon. Jonathan lets his own teeth penetrate and Geoffrey lifts his mouth from Jonathan to moan out a _“yes.”_ Pressing his forehead to the back of Jonathan's neck, Geoffrey drives his hips forward and up with more fervour.

“If you've– _commanded_ me to this… I don't care– I don't want to stop,” Geoffrey gasps.

Jonathan licks at the quickly sealing wound beneath this lips. “What do you feel? What… what do you _want?”_

“Fucking hell, _you.”_ Geoffrey’s voice is a strained hiss. “I want _you.”_ Geoffrey rolls Jonathan half onto his stomach and fucks him in a way that's suffocating in its intensity. Words must be too much, because Geoffrey does not speak again – and Jonathan can hardly blame him – but his voice slinks into Jonathan's head loud and clear. 

_Whatever devil this makes me, I'm yours to damn into eternity, Jon._

With that, Jonathan feels the tightly wound pleasure Geoffrey takes from him sear into his entire being, threatening to snap, to engulf, and just as Jonathan sends back the prickling, white-hot heat radiating through his own body, Geoffrey snakes a hand down to wrap his fingers around Jonathan’s cock to bring him to his end.

Beyond that, the flood is endless; a void where they were empty, now made full by desecrated affection. Their blood thrums as their throats and chests do with strained and gasping moans and contented curses. Jonathan is dimly aware of Geoffrey helping him turn over again. Geoffrey kisses him deeply, with meaning Jonathan isn't sure the man is aware of yet, and Jonathan's mouth is suddenly full of blood – Geoffrey's blood – ancient and shared and soothing in its tang. He pulls away from Jonathan with a surprised look in his hazy eyes. He smears dark ruby along Jonathan's lips, down his beard to his chin, with a reverent touch.

“I _don't,”_ Geoffrey says, and kisses Jonathan again. But they both already know that denial is doomed to become an eventual truth.

Gorged and satiated on each other, the dawn takes them under easily, and in the dusk that follows daylight’s own slumber, Jonathan wakes alone in his bed. It is a disappointment, but not at all a shock. His eyes soon find a tall shape at the double doors to the balcony, one cracked open just enough for the width of Geoffrey's shoulders. He is flanked by the slight billow of black-out curtains, cigarette smoke trailing serpentine towards the balmy night air of London's West End.

“I don't want to stay here much longer– England. Where d’you suppose creatures such as us could make a home, Jonny?”

Jonathan lifts himself onto one elbow. His throat tightens, but he manages to speak the first thought that sparks in his mind. “Maybe Dublin.”

A crooked grin lifts one corner of Geoffrey's mouth and he laughs, then draws a final pull from his cigarette before flicking it over the balustrade. He takes one step forward back into the room, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his tattered coat.

“Maybe Dublin,” he murmurs. Geoffrey's eyes are still smiling as he says it. “But not for now.” Lazily, he turns back towards the double doors, but gives one last mischievous look towards Jonathan over his shoulder. A sliver of hair flops over Geoffrey's scarred brow, making the glint in his eyes all the more rakish. “I'm sure we've logistics to figure out. Find another hospital or infirmary for you to infiltrate, aye?” He stares down at his boots.

Jonathan's face heats and now he’s smiling as well. “Perhaps. Though I'm not sure I could be so lucky again.”

“Find people so foolish and gullible again, more like,” Geoffrey retorts with another pointed glance up at Jonathan. He walks out through the one open door and just when Jonathan thinks he might leave, Geoffrey sighs heavily. “My birthday is next Thursday… You know, I'd nearly forgot. Hm. Dead before forty-two, imagine that…” 

Jonathan takes in the tangled mix of sorrow and loneliness, threads it back through the needle-hole of their bond and splices it with adoration. He watches the stiff line of Geoffrey's shoulders settle. Jonathan sits up, brings his legs over the side of the bed.

_“Geoffrey–”_

“If I don't see you before then, I'll see you Thursday.”

Though Geoffrey isn't looking, Jonathan nods anyway. “Yes. Thursday, of course.”

“Oh, and Jon? Fecking eat something proper, yeah? I can nearly see the blue of your eyes again and it's too becoming on that face of yours.”

Another hungry, lust-drunk smirk, then Geoffrey McCullum is gone.

“Right, wouldn't want that,” Jonathan whispers to the scent of tobacco, blood, and aftershave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** I firstly note, because I forgot to previously, that my version of Jonathan in this story did not take his own mother's life, but that it was Emelyne's severe dementia (it seems as though her symptoms are not just "sundowning") and the stress of losing both her children - along with the resulting hallucinations coupled with Mary and Jonathan _actually_ showing back up, in the flesh - that was ultimately too much for her body and mind to take. But because of this, Jonathan still blames himself as a contributor to her death. I also believe he felt a lot of regret for not having been there for her when her symptoms would have first manifested, because he'd enlisted in the war.
> 
> Some of you may or may not have picked up on where I got my story title (a quote from Hannibal Lecter to Will Graham in many media forms, originally from Harris's _Red Dragon._ ), but I've also used quotes from vampire related books and film as inspiration for the chapter titles ( _The Vampire Chronicles_ & The Only Lovers Left Alive) so far lol. Since we don't know exactly _how_ Reid and McCullum would be together (because wtf Dontnod), I've kinda used Bryan Fuller's version of Hannibal & Will, as well as Daniel Molloy & Armand from Anne Rice's _The Vampire Chronicles_ as my models for their twisted-but-affectionate-though-at-times-toxic relationship. And maybe there is a _teensy_ bit of Lestat & Louis in there, too. Eh, a little bit of each is peppered in♡
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has read this and commented, subscribed, given kudos, or bookmarked. It seriously means so much because I think this is one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had in writing something, and knowing others are enjoying reading it makes me really stoked to do more. I truly missed writing things with a melancholic horror element to it ;)


	4. Blue Language (1920)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song quoted as the epigraph for this chapter is what I just can't help but get stuck in my head whenever I think about naughty things going on between Reid & McCullum, which is... often, let's be honest here.
> 
> I suppose this whole fic counts as canon-divergent, no? I also say that because apparently, I headcanon Reid and McCullum as being older than most, if not all, in the fandom do? Ah, well. Blame the character design & graphics.
> 
> The following chapter is nothing but gratuitous self-indulgent nonsense, btw (look, I thoroughly enjoy Jonathan's face, but as soon as my eyes were blessed with the sight of him without a beard in a texture-less character model, it was over for me).

_Tugging a rhythm to the vision that's in my head_   
_Tugging a beat to the sight of you lying_   
_So delighted with a new understanding_   
_Something about a little evil that makes that_   
_Unmistakable noise I was hearing,_   
_Unmistakable sound that I know so well_   
_Spent and sighing with a look in your eye_   
_Spent and sighing with a look on your face like_   
_Sweet revelation, sweet surrender_

– A Perfect Circle, _"Thinking of You"_

* * *

He doesn’t know why these damned beasts still insist on skulking below bridges or through the gaping mouths of sewer tunnels like fabled monsters in fairy tales. When Geoffrey had passed the occasional Priwen patrol in the streets the last few months, the guardsmen reported less and less Vulkod and sewer beasts. They’d become rarer than the rabid skals thankfully, but still they lumber about in the open here and there now that some of London's braver citizens no longer abide by such a strict curfew. Frankly, Geoffrey is happy to let the Sewer Skals deal with those other hulking creatures however they must, he doesn't really give a damn; they are on their own in so far as he is concerned… no matter what Jonathan had spoken of that strange commune’s leftover humanity or geniality towards him. Geoffrey has only concern about doing his duty in protecting the human citizens of London, and the extermination of these ghastly things is tantamount to that.

The enjoyment he finds in the taste of their blood is but a side benefit.

The swift blow of Geoffrey's sword makes a slick squelching sound as it lands, cutting into the juncture of the bestial Vulkod's shoulder and its thick, muscled neck. A terrible, agonised sound echoes off the curved, stone walls beneath the bridge as the creature tries to grab for Geoffrey and the weapon lodged deep in its flesh. Geoffrey dashes away, incorporeal, resigned to leaving his sword for now. _Damnit,_ he curses internally, but knows his arsenal does not end at conventional weaponry. When he lunges back towards the beast, Geoffrey grabs onto one of its clawing arms and quickly bites into the crook of its elbow. The taste of dirt-laiden fur and musky sweat is blessedly replaced by the satisfying warmth of arterial blood soon enough, but Geoffrey does not get his fill, does not expect to. However, he nearly anticipates the sharp swipe he takes to his back that tears through his jacket, shirts, and flesh beneath. Perhaps he really should have gone ahead and worn his bulletproof vest, Geoffrey thinks. His immortality has made him cocky, he knows. But he laughs, delirious with the fight, and unholsters the howdah pistol from his hip, thumbing back its hammers to take aim at the beast’s head. He squeezes each of the triggers; once, twice, two bullets fired, but it doesn’t go down, stubborn bastard. These particular creatures always are. Geoffrey decides to freeze the blood in its veins so the fucker doesn’t try to once more flay him alive as he reloads his gun.

On the off chance the beast’s death howls attract any bloody guardsmen that may be patrolling (he's been able to avoid inadvertently crossing paths with most Priwen these days), Geoffrey re-positions the red balaclava over half his face, and points the long barrels of his pistol at the lesser Vulkod’s chest from a range that’s as point-blank as he is willing to risk his own safety. As Geoffrey moves his left hand around the barrels to steady his shot proper, crimson pools and swirls around the creature while it begins to recover from the powerful pull Geoffrey had had on the flow of its blood.

For a moment, he stands in confusion as if he were mesmerised, gawking at the dark-red colour climbing around the beast’s legs and torso in large, thready wisps. It growls and scratches at its own limbs trying to bat away its unseen attacker. Geoffrey’s sword clatters to the ground with the beast’s flailing. All at once, the Vulkod is silenced as its sternum is pierced by a different sword, the blade shining wet-black in the soft halo of moonlight peeking beyond their cover. The fabric over Geoffrey’s nose and mouth protects against the hot spray of blood that flecks his shirt front and jacket.

The Vulkod falls to its knees, sliding off the sword in its chest, and crumples heavily to the side. Jonathan Reid stands above the hulking dead thing, his chest heaving below the pristine fecking three-piece bespoke he wears. Not a speck of blood on the grey tweed, and the man is even wearing a bowler hat, the proper fucking gobshite. Jonathan's face is almost bare except for the slight shadow of stubble along his sharp jaw. Must've shaved right before leaving for London. Jonathan's version of appearing _inconspicuous_ in England.

Something strange and new and awfully uncomfortable twists in Geoffrey's gut at the sight of Jonathan like this.

Picking up his sword, Geoffrey checks the blade then wipes it clean across his pant leg before sheathing it. “Fair play, Reid. Welcome back.” He turns to walk away, he's done here, but Jonathan heads him off in a shadowy flash. Jonathan's own sword looks ridiculous swaying from his hip in perfect view, coupled with that pretentious getup. All he needs is a sawed-off holstered beneath his arm to complete the look of a gentry gone rotten.

 _“Geoffrey.”_ Jonathan reaches out for him, but Geoffrey stops him with one step forward and a finger jabbed in his direction.

 _“No,_ I didn’t feel you,” Geoffrey hisses. He quickly pulls his balaclava down off his face. “I didn’t feel you _for over two bleedin’ months._ Fine. That was well an’ good, you and your scholarly medical _research._ But then you come back, like this,” he gestures to Jonathan’s lean suit, his face with its too-clear eyes and clean-shaven jaw; Geoffrey knocks that stupid bowler off Jonathan's head– and thank fuck his hair is unchanged. He feels a slight satisfaction in watching Jonathan try to fumble with the hat before it hits the damp ground. “You come back and _I still don’t feel you._ Not until yer there…” He motions towards the large heap of a corpse. “Playing at being a fecking silent hero or some shite. You could not _tell me?_ Had to make your grand entrance, Reid?”

It was eerie and unnerving. Jonathan was always like this open wound, bleeding out to Geoffrey. Distance was one thing he learned to deal with, but actually having Jonathan closed off to him stoked a violent anger and worry within Geoffrey.

And he _had_ worried. After what, precisely?

Jonathan grabs for him again, hands fisting into the wool of Geoffrey’s jacket sleeves. He steps back as Jonathan advances. “Geoffrey, I’m sorry, but I could not take the _risk.”_ His eyes are the most intense Geoffrey can recall seeing them in quite a time. Jonathan's voice is pained and raw in its honesty. Geoffrey’s back hits a wall, and he feels cornered by those eyes and that voice. “But I am here now, you can feel me.” _Can't you?_ – that part is unspoken, but Geoffrey knows it's there with the way Jonathan's voice begs.

But he has to know. Geoffrey levels a challenging glare at him. “How long, then?” Has to know for how long Jonathan thought to scrape thin their tenuous trust by not letting his presence be known.

Jonathan looks down between them like some poor, kicked mutt. His brow is drawn over his sad eyes when he glances back up at Geoffrey. His next words pour out in a guilty rush. “Only a couple full days, I've been staying and doing work at Pemb–”

Geoffrey shoves him away and lands a punch to that perfect fucking jaw.

“Two days and you thought not to reach out to _me_ first!” Geoffrey seethes as he mutters his loathsome disbelief, “You do not trust me now? S'that it? After all this time and _what I give to you,_ and you still don't…” He paces away, drawing a hand back through his hair, wanting to tear it out in his aggravation. A few nights shouldn't bloody matter. The prudent secrecy shouldn’t, but it does. Geoffrey's drops his hand at his side in a fist as he whirls back around to Jonathan. “God's fucking blood, why I still stick to you!”

Hands braced on his thighs, Jonathan spits red-tinged saliva onto the cobblestone. “You know why…” comes the ominous answer. His eyes lock with Geoffrey’s, angry. _"Please,_ Geoffrey. Keep your voice down, we don’t know who or what else is could be out here. And we certainly don’t need attention drawn to us from anything, nevermind what that sewer beast could have attracted. Now, if you would only listen to me, I could–” Jonathan recovers himself, straightens up, but then Geoffrey is pulling Jonathan back with him by the tie.

Geoffrey kisses him in a ravening fashion, and all the while, Jonathan is still trying to placate Geoffrey even though he readily returns every kiss. The grip Geoffrey has on Jonathan's clothing is pulled away; his hands, soon after, are pinned to the cool stone at his sides.

 _You know I only try to protect us. Do not forget there are still errant members of Ascalon that likely hide about London. I couldn't lead them to you._ Voice in Geoffrey's head, fingers slipping between his.

“I'll fucking kill them all… rip 'em right to shreds, if they come near. What do you think I _am?_ Let the bastards… let them come find me... try to take their vengeance,” Geoffrey speaks against Jonathan's mouth at the break of each kiss. His blood is rapid and boiling in his veins, heating every inch of him. He feels his dick stiffen in his trousers as Jonathan's claws dig into his hands and he presses his groin to Geoffrey’s.

“If it is revenge they should continue to seek for a perceived betrayal on my part to the whole of Ascalon and Ekon the world over, they’ll come after what’s important to me first. Their members are petty, cruel, and vindictive, and you... are all I have left.” Jonathan pauses, closes his eyes in thought. “I'd... rather it didn't come to that sort of fight, honestly.” And Jonathan chuckles, the arsehole.

Geoffrey nips at Jonathan's bottom lip hard enough for blood to bead to the surface, then kisses him rough and shamefully wanton. They're still clinging close to one another when he pulls away. “You've no idea, Jon, how badly I wish I could end you, not love you.”

“I know.” Jonathan's words are like a resigned breath. Geoffrey watches as Jonathan rolls down the sleeves of his suit jacket and shirt to bite down on the pale, exposed skin there. The familiarity of this gesture is haunting. After a moment, Jonathan cups Geoffrey's face with a tenderness that reignites his ire yet fills Geoffrey with a warmth he hasn't truly known since he was alive. When Jonathan leans in to press their mouths together again, Geoffrey can smell Jonathan's sweet blood so strongly, even before his lips part to welcome the flood over his tongue and into his throat.

 _And it's always everything, this._ Hypnotic and dangerous.

Geoffrey still feels murderous over Jonathan Reid, can't be helped. This immortal curse, he can deal with now, but it's that goddamned bloodlust whenever he drinks from Jonathan – even though it never amounts to more than just a taste at a time – which makes him think he might be driven half-mad one of these days. He understands now, Jonathan’s old fear, and through Jonathan, has come to learn that blood of innocents need not be their sustenance to exist.

They've each other for that, to put it simply. 

And it's times like these, when their hands and mouths and tongues are on one another for more than just a necessary healing draught, that Geoffrey’s want turns vicious.

He wants to drink in from that warm, vermilion fount deep inside Jonathan. Would it be his heart, where that nectar of eternity is created? Geoffrey doesn't know these things. He thinks he'd eat it raw if it were, though. And perhaps that immortal core is within his own body, just the same, shared.

Would he have these fucked up thoughts if he were still human? Or does Jonathan pepper these ideas inside his head, making him think they are his own? Geoffrey doesn't have those answers, either. He may never. But he doesn't give a goddamn anymore. He only knows a life filled with insatiable wants now.

And he always wants Jonathan.

Wants to rip his flesh open like the soft rind of overripe fruit, taste him on and on 'til he meets pit and marrow, and Geoffrey thinks he'd suck that dry for good measure, as well. He wants with unending greed, Jonathan's sweetness – the tart, too – maybe that especially; his Maker’s acidic wit and passion that burns straight on past Jonathan's quiet, endearing gloom.

He'd empty him out and curl like smoke between the rungs of Jonathan's ribs; the home from whence he was surely begotten, because Geoffrey cannot think of his life before his turning when he gets these thoughts.

Jonathan, his creator; his grisly architect.

He knows– Geoffrey knows that as _Ekon,_ as leeches, blood-drinkers, they are the serpent and the apple; gods and devils, both. Tempter and temptation; composers of vile damnation. And it is like this, even towards each other.

Jonathan, with his hands on Geoffrey’s scabbard belt, the buttons of his fly; Geoffrey's own hand cupping the hardness in Jonathan’s trousers while he tries to make quick work of the same offending straps and buckles around Jonathan’s hips. Jonathan makes to sink to his knees, but no… Geoffrey grips his arm, stops him and pulls him back up into a kiss as impassioned as his thoughts. Warm, blood coated tongues, fingers tracing where a beard should shadow. He leads Jonathan away from the arching cover of the bridge above.

Indeed, Geoffrey loves him in the way a lover might love… or perhaps it is nothing like that at all.

It astonishes him in the same way it disgusts him. His life beside Jonathan is not something Geoffrey would have ever imagined himself choosing, nevermind the part of it that would have gotten even his mortal self arrested or bludgeoned to death in a narrow alley. But, he supposes he didn’t choose it. Any of it. His heart and Jonathan made these choices for him. It is a normalcy he has grown into, malignant and tarnished and treasured. 

When Jonathan had forced his blood, emetic and lush, into his mouth, Geoffrey had felt the worst agony of his life as his body died and his awareness trudged on until his mind finally let him blackout and lose consciousness. But, Geoffrey awoke with the most total hunger, and found the infatuation he held for this vampire doctor, that he’d even hidden from himself, had grown exponentially. And through that infatuation – and later, forgiveness – he found that he could still crack on just fine as a leech, and that this new version of his life could be just that: living. Then in giving up his leadership of Priwen, he’d gained so much more he’d not realised he had brushed to the wayside for decades. Now Geoffrey has all the time in the world to take back a life that had been groomed for strict service to the Guard of Priwen and not much else.

He cannot help but wonder in guilt, some days, if his brother could have lived– _existed_ on in this way; as he and Jonathan do. Easily hiding their nature within society, controlling it. Going on like they're some sort of covert vigilantes. Jonathan remaining the good doctor. Eldritch had Geoffrey believe for most his life, that all leeches – _vampires –_ were mindless monstrosities that needed to be exterminated without prejudice. And oh, was that not a law of irony?

As Geoffrey directs Jonathan around stacks of barrels and tarp-covered crates to a park bench, he catches their murky image in the dark reflecting pool at their side. He thinks perhaps the strict rules of the Guard still ring true for the two of them.

But he has lost his old life and heart to Jonathan Emmet Reid, and he is lost, _so forever bloody lost._

 _Hunter of mine, you know you will never truly lose sight of me._ Jonathan seats himself on the bench, staring up at Geoffrey with a barely-there smirk. Geoffrey sees the affection in the sardonic smile of his eyes, too. With the guiding hands of his maker, Geoffrey sits astride Jonathan's thighs and listens to the discordant beat of his heart matching Geoffrey's own. It drums on against the faint rattle of leaves from the sentinel, blue-black trees. A stone lion watches on, scowling into the flickering dim of Temple’s gas lamp-lit night, mouth open...

Jonathan’s lips over Geoffrey's throat, coming to be replaced with his palm. His free hand venturing between Geoffrey’s thighs. It is like a high, the build of anticipation. He feels as much as he hears Jonathan’s needs and wants. Their thoughts are a connected web of gossamer, delicate but strong. Jonathan longs for Geoffrey's mouth, his blood, his cock in his arse. Geoffrey can find the humour in another plummy Ekon catching them with their pants ‘round their ankles as he fucks Jonathan over the stone lip of the pool, but it’d be a right bags if some unsuspecting couple on a nighttime stroll came upon ‘em. They’ll have to make due with quick and efficient, for now. Geoffrey spits into his hand, grins when Jonathan gets the message and eagerly opens the front of his trousers further. Geoffrey’s hand is slightly cold to their heated flesh. He revels in the small flinch and choked sound from Jonathan. They are still dead things, their bodies just haven’t fully caught on yet.

Like a whisper singing behind his eyes, Geoffrey knows Jonathan wants him to slow his hand. So he does, teasingly so, licking his palm first to slick it more. He tilts his head down and kisses Jonathan deeply, lingering in that heady moment for a stretch of seconds where they can only concentrate on the slow, wet slide of Geoffrey’s hand around them both. When Geoffrey pulls away, he cannot help but stare into Jonathan’s face: brow knit, jaw tightened as he fights to give in to what they’re both feeling. Jonathan’s eyelids flutter and he moans.

“God’s heart, but you’re beautiful.” Geoffrey smooths Jonathan’s hair up and away from where it’s fallen over his forehead before cradling the back of his head. Wasting no more time, Geoffrey sinks his teeth into the side of Jonathan's neck, head swimming instantly with Jonathan’s thoughts and the pleasured sounds in his ear. Every sensation expands and multiplies at what feels like one hundred fold. The calming smell of damp earth and decomposing leaves; burning gaslight and the dance of its flame; the night-cool water before them housed in stone that ripples with the breeze; the sweet-salt scent of their come; the hum of Jonathan’s blood rushing through his artery to meet Geoffrey’s mouth.

_Is this what you are in need of, Geoffrey?_

Geoffrey pulls off Jonathan’s neck. He curses the way his voice breaks beneath a contented sigh, his mind full of bliss. He moves his hand to Jonathan’s face. “Just you wait ‘til I’ve got you in bed. The safehouse… near Dawson’s old manor. We could...” He arches a questioning brow at Jonathan. As far as he knows, the place is still well boarded up, left to decay in the skeleton of its former decadence.

Jonathan nods dutifully and smiles. “Do you know the time? Have I made you...” His voice trails into a quiet groan as Geoffrey’s hand leaves the grip on both of them to momentarily pay sole attention in rubbing his thumb through the slick dribbling from Jonathan’s cock. “...forget about the dawn perhaps, Geoffrey?”

Jerking them both again, Geoffrey chuckles. “–make _you_ forget your words, I see.” He knocks his forehead against Jonathan’s, tightens his grasp and, despite the weight of Geoffrey on his lap, Jonathan tries canting his hips in time with the motion of Geoffrey’s fist. His fingers dig bruisingly hard into Geoffrey’s waist.

The slide of Jonathan’s cock against his is tipping Geoffrey over the edge, and he senses that taut coil within Jonathan, too. He quickens the pace of his hand and silently offers and pleas for Jonathan to drink from him. With movements much too fast for any mortal to surely see, Jonathan rips open Geoffrey’s shirtfront, tears at his union suit, and bites into the muscle of his chest, right below his left clavicle. He feels Jonathan suck eagerly against his flesh until Jonathan stops suddenly, gasping loud, drawn-out moans into Geoffrey’s skin. His come coats Geoffrey’s fingers and dick. It’s nearly enough to push Geoffrey over, aye, but Jonathan is moving Geoffrey's hand away, replacing it with his own as he resumes his feeding.

When Geoffrey comes, it’s fucking visceral; Jonathan sends him images and feelings through what feels like his actual bloodstream. Tongue to blood, blood to his goddamn brain like a well-aimed slug. It is the personal feeling Jonathan has just experienced when he'd come; images in memory of Jonathan down on his knees in front of Geoffrey; of Jonathan screwing him, and of the night before Jonathan left for Scotland, when Geoffrey had fucked Jonathan so hard, he thought he might kill or consume the man.

Back to his own senses, Geoffrey blinks a few times before the physical image of Jonathan swims back into focus. _“Nách mór an diabhal thú…”_ he finds himself murmuring. “What the piss was that?”

Jonathan smiles all sweet, presses a lingering kiss to Geoffrey's jaw. “I... pick up on your thoughts and feelings whenever we... well...” he whispers faint and meekly against Geoffrey’s ear. “It is much easier when I drink from you, to know it. Putting it frankly, I know exactly what it is like for you when you orgasm.” And he looks so fucking smug now. “I can only suggest you attempt it for yourself sometime– I could feel yours perfectly, all while feeding mine to you.”

Geoffrey stares down at his hand, the mess dripping down the knuckles of his fingers. He wants to wipe it across the lapel of that posh fucking suit, so he does. And good God, Jonathan must not 'ave heard the innuendo in his words, so Geoffrey cannot help but point it out for him.

“Mm, indeed. Perhaps then I will, if you are so hungry for it,” he says. Jonathan shivers while Geoffrey runs a finger up the length of his cock, softening against Jonathan's stomach. Geoffrey collects more of the spend there and holds his finger before Jonathan's mouth. How willingly Jonathan obliges him, lips parting, leaning forward enough to take Geoffrey's finger into his mouth. “Swear you are the fucking Devil himself sometimes, Jon.”

* * *

They reach Pembroke just shy of an hour to full sunrise. Jonathan knows Geoffrey can make it to another safehouse just fine; there are still abandoned flats peppering the streets of London that offer enough shelter from the direct light of the sun, despite the rebuilding efforts about the city. However, the thought of them parting this night hangs heavy in Jonathan’s chest.

The looming brick and wrought iron of the hospital’s gate greets them and a few nurses loiter beyond it, readying supplies for the morning shift before they take their leave. Jonathan stops a little ways past the gate. No one says much of anything when he doesn’t enter through the main doors of the hospital during his occasional stays to use his old lab, see to patients in need of surgery, or give his professional opinion when inquired. There are other entrances after all, but he also assumes by now, that a small collection of staff... suspect him. He and Geoffrey are also covered in quite a lot of blood currently, there is no hiding that behind a glamour.

It has been nearly two and a half years since his return to London after the Great War and his employment at Pembroke, as well as... his fateful meeting with Myrddin. Jonathan is learning how to master hiding his true appearance from humans, but he could not fool himself into thinking it is perfect. Those around him must notice a slight change in his eyes and pallor, the way his face goes _unchanged,_ not gathering an additional line or crease. The silver that blots Jonathan's temples, but hasn’t yet bled through the rest of his jet black hair, nor peppered its way within his beard when he does have it grown it out more.

There are times he wonders if perhaps the doctors and nurses even knew of Swansea’s dealings with the Brotherhood of St. Paul’s Stole, only keeping their lips tight out of respect for the late doctor. A nebulous friendship Jonathan keeps with a certain whip-smart nurse says that many looked the other way in favour of all the good Jonathan had done for London and the hospital. He imagines they had done the same for Edgar for far longer.

Jonathan can sense that Geoffrey plans to leave him for the night very shortly. He slows his steps, Geoffrey soon following suit. Careful to not be seen, Jonathan turns to face Geoffrey and gently grabs the fingers of his hand that’s out of view from prying eyes by the cover of his body. 

“Geoffrey, _stay,”_ Jonathan whispers loud enough that only Geoffrey can hear. He watches uncertainty flicker through Geoffrey's icy eyes. Jonathan won’t press him, and with that, he lets go of Geoffrey’s hand and backs away, prepared to continue on to the small balcony of his room alone. But Geoffrey answers him, simply and quietly: “Yeah. All right.” He looks away from Jonathan once, to the staff past the iron bars of the fencing, then takes two steps forward to press a rough kiss to Jonathan’s mouth. There’s a woman’s surprised gasp, which is easily ignored for the sensation of Geoffrey’s lips and tongue against Jonathan's own; the rasp of Geoffrey's stubble against his skin; the play of his fingers along the back of Jonathan’s head and neck.

When they part, Jonathan feels, quite frankly, a bit dazed. There is a familiar scowl marring Geoffrey’s features when Jonathan looks at him. He’s gesturing rudely to the hospital staff gawking their way. “Ye fucking turn back around, aye, the lot of you! You’ve seen nothing of note!” Jonathan cannot help but laugh as Geoffrey rushes past him to disappear in tendrils of smoke upon the makeshift balcony of Jonathan's room once he’s entirely out of their audience's view. 

Jonathan imagines it would be an appropriate time to tip his hat politely to these onlookers before taking his leave… if only he’d not forgotten his soiled hat in Temple Gardens, of course. 

The dawn is upon them, but Jonathan has a few more plans for Geoffrey, plans involving tearing the rest of his tattered and ruined clothing from him properly before the sun sings them to sleep.

They may not be of the living in the most base, scientific of terms, no. But they are still souls draped in dark hair and death-pale skin, ornamented with gnashing teeth; scaffolding of bones that can still crush and be crushed; blood that does not relent in its current to extremities and hearts so warmed by that river, by one another. Within – if one could look through and play audience to, as they so often do – is a show of life in a stubborn swell.

Perhaps they are indeed alive, masquerading as death, or a death elaborately costumed as life, continuing to perform their parts even after the curtain has fallen softly on the stage. Their only bow, to the florid heat of necks in a celebratory effusion– but never final.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nách mór an diabhal thú - Aren’t you the devil
> 
> Oh! And if you'd like, you can follow me on tumblr @thefire-in-the-nightsky (especially if I have any Dragon Age fans as readers) or @oh_amatus on Twitter :)


	5. For He is Borne to the Grave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, for something a little different. Stream of consciousness, Jonny's POV. We are still in 1920, folks.

_Now I have warned thee of thy vain glory and of thy pride, that thou hast many times erred against thy Maker. Beware of everlasting pain, for of all earthly knights, I have most pity of thee, for I know well thou hast not thy peer on any earthly sinful man._

–- Sir Thomas Malory, _Le Morte d’Arthur_

I keep you here. I keep you for myself, though I am not deserving of such a prize. You aren't… an easy man, no. But you are mine, and that is how I would have it. Your adulation in motion is hard won; I don't need words. Even when you almost say it. I wonder, if you have ever known the meaning of such words. Not from the depths of your mortal youth, from familial or parental love – though a guardian of sorts, I am, now – and not from the mentor that caged you; luring you in, feeding scraps of humanity via manifesto and bloodied sword edge. That love brought death. I gifted you both. I don't know if it's different.

But I am all too keenly aware, during each graphite-grey night, what I have taken from you. I cannot forget it, nor let it go, because I cannot forget what was taken from me by my own ancient maker. I stole from you your sun, the rising of your body with the morning, the routine of daybreak. I became that burning star for you, with expert selfishness I never knew existed within, lurking beneath layers of skin and oath and bedside manner. And now you rise only for me, for the hunger.

Will you one day bring me my end and pry the serpent's tail from its mouth? Avenge and stay loyal to that version of you that lived and breathed before I poured myself into your body? Or will you let me remain where I've sloshed and settled in your gut, so deep within the heart of your hidden depravity, absorbed into every cell so that you cannot even sweat me out?

To this day, I can't help but wonder why you let me go at every turn, only to follow on my heels with fervent persistence across London. Perhaps, from the first moment we locked eyes, I always knew you would let me take you. 

I was the rabbit to your fox, but that night I showed you the truth of the wolf’s yellowed teeth sank tight over your throat. The wolf you baited with your leniency, your coy hesitations and vacant threats.

But there is something that brings me even more worry.

I have never told you– and I may never, that you would have died that night, regardless of whether I snuffed out your flame with my kiss. You died for me the moment you drank an immortal king's blood like a shot of bolstering liquor. Old and stagnant, I saw it flood and decay you. Not yet knowing why, I could still smell imminent death on you as strong and bright as orichalcum. And if not death in its entirety, then the killing off of what made you human. You were a fool, so very youthful in your idiotic stubbornness and naive conviction but, how I loved and hated you for your fatal hubris.

An affliction I could not quite cure. I knew I'd never heal the wounds that originally flayed you, as deep in your past as they are. Though of course, I did not know the exact motivation of your persevering hatred and suffering at the time you levelled your blade at my heart. I only suspected something beyond madness must have driven you. Therefore, I let you climb into my jaws, rolled my tongue over yours and fed you warmth and life and night-blackened red. I could not risk or cause your end, nor the loss of your potential understanding, and in this, I fortuitously refused you the chance to be Arthur's childe... All of it, because I could not imagine walking an eternity in which you were no longer following me. A dreadful, selfish purpose.

It is no different now.

So I take you home, onward to Dublin; to where every facet of my hunter was originally cut; on to the hellfires of war, because no man, mortal or of a life eternal, is truly safe from bloodlust.


	6. Folie à Deux - Pt. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** I've recently edited/re-written the majority of the chapters, but mostly fiddled with Chapter IV (Blue Language). Nothing terribly story-altering or anything like that. Just cleaned up some clunkier paragraphs, tweaked dialogue, and edited out things that just didn't work.
> 
> I've had this strange little idea for so, so very long and I'm happy to be getting it out finally. Wanted it posted for MerMay, but it ended up much longer than I originally anticipated, hence why it will be posted in two parts.
> 
> I am dedicating this portion of the story (Parts I & II) to one of my very dearest friends, Dark_Ruby_Regalia, who has always been an endless fount of inspiration and invaluable support for me♥

_ As black as the night can get  
Everything is safer now  
There's always a way to forget  
Once you learn to find a way how  
In the blur of serenity  
Where did everything get lost?  
The flowers of naiveté  
Buried in a layer of frost  
  
The smell of sunshine,  
I remember sometimes  
  
Thought he had it all before they called his bluff  
Found out that his skin just wasn't thick enough  
Wanted to go back to how it was before  
Thought he lost everything  
Then he lost a whole lot more  
A fool's devotion  
Swallowed up in empty space  
The tears of regret  
Frozen to the side of his face _

Nine Inch Nails - "I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally"

* * *

An evening is never so dim to his senses anymore, especially not here; not ever dark enough for familiar contentments. Jonathan sees the night in all of its intensity. Now exhibitions of deepest indigos, any and all possible poetic descriptions of midnight blues. Sad colours and hues of the sort of cold he does not shirk from any longer. Even where he sits upon the cool sand now, with Geoffrey’s body pressing in close to him, mouth at his neck, Jonathan finds an odd appreciation for the fleeting autumn night, able to watch its minute changes over the slope of Geoffrey’s shoulder. There is a longing Jonathan senses in the crystalline wink of the stars he’d never taken full notice of while in London. Had not the time nor head to years ago in France. It is as if the stars too, find a sorrow in the short time they are allowed in being most present during this period of time.

The inhale and exhales of the Irish sea are the susurrations he does not get the privilege of enjoying from Geoffrey’s body, from his dormant lungs. Jonathan’s gaze goes to the water now; an expanse of rippling, rolling wet blackness as he embraces too, the expanse of Geoffrey’s back. If the sky lends this land its murkiness, then the sea gifts the Magheramore its own tenebrous veneer. Geoffrey grips him back, tongue dipping below Jonathan’s unbuttoned collar. “Are you still with me? Have I bored you?” he asks, smirk apparent against Jonathan’s skin.  _ Do I cause you doubt?  _ Jonathan answers with a questioning thought and finds himself smiling as he captures Geoffrey’s lips with his own. Rough– a real answer. Jonathan's kisses trail and nudge the smug jut of Geoffrey’s jaw, and he finds himself opening his eyes just enough to catch a glimpse of the ray of waning moonlight parting the pitch of the water; a pale curve stretched like the sharp point of a fang. The water is the only thing Jonathan cannot ever decipher in its particular type of darkness. The sight instantly reminds Jonathan of his abyssal hunger, the prickle of it, the terror of its chronic growth without an immediate cure on the horizon.

Geoffrey shifts to further straddle his legs between the wide spread of Jonathan’s own thighs, with his hands busy opening the buttoned flies of their trousers. In playful retaliation, Jonathan pushes open Geoffrey’s shirtfront and vest, pulls aside the thin fabric of the undershirt that impedes him in pressing his mouth to Geoffrey’s shoulder and the enticing thrum there. As teeth pierce flesh, and blood seeps from wound, Geoffrey hisses curses close to Jonathan’s ear, hand shoving rough and seeking into the front of Jonathan’s pants. The touch of Geoffrey’s palm becomes sweeter once he grips warm fingers around the length of him, temporarily contenting them both as he pulls Jonathan free from his trousers. Geoffrey’s other arm brushes against Jonathan’s with a telling, rhythmic movement Jonathan wishes, with a voyeuristic intent, he could see as he feeds. He closes his eyes to visualise it until Geoffrey slowly slides his own cock against Jonathan’s– that singular heat more desirable than the blood at times. Jonathan takes in the scent of sanguine iron; the combined sharp and salt smell of the sea and their arousal coating their skin, Geoffrey’s curled fingers, his thumb as it collects another unconscious dribble from Jonathan’s cockhead. Jonathan looses a moan from his chest, biting and sucking at Geoffrey’s shoulder with a bit more force.

There is another scent, unfamiliar, indiscernible to both Jonathan’s mortal and immortal memory-sense. It arrives on the sweetness of shifting wet sand and waves caressing slick rocks patinated with algae. There is something else, too, besides the mere curiousness of this unexpected scent. A movement in Jonathan’s mind; a sensation like the onset of an itch, or the fading ache of a depressed bruise. To an ordinary human, he would explain it as much like being in a room alone, then knowing, without seeing, the sudden presence of another entering, breaking the surface of that previous solitude; the shift in atmosphere. And this presence has intruded upon his shared solitude with Geoffrey, even here, in the open air. But it is not knowing the origin of what this disturbance comes from that begins nagging at Jonathan. Not to mention the peculiar lurch his attention keeps insistently giving towards the sea.

Something commingles with the emotions quietly projected by Geoffrey; a disharmonious lullaby drifting in and out of Jonathan’s head. Geoffrey’s influence on him is too strong, strong enough so that the strange melody plays on like a dysfunctioning gramophone, interspersed. It soon becomes vocal; an eerie whisper just beyond the pleasured murmurings of Geoffrey’s own lilt. At once Jonathan knows– cannot however, explain just  _ how  _ he knows, that this song is not from the production of human vocal chords, nor of any familiar avian sort. He listens, but feels nothing. It is not his ears which pick up the sounds, of that he is perfectly certain.

Jonathan lifts his mouth from Geoffrey’s flesh with heavy reluctance, licks his lips and stills Geoffrey’s hand, much to his Progeny’s obvious annoyance. “Do you hear it?”

_ “Reid.  _ What exactly, am I s’posed to be hearing?” Geoffrey is hazy-eyed and rightfully lost in his lust, as Jonathan should have been. He grips the front of Jonathan’s vest, moving in to kiss him, but the vague sight Jonathan thinks he glimpses along the beach has him firmly stopping Geoffrey with a hand curled around the side of his neck.

“I believe we are being watched.”

Geoffrey takes a long pause, eyes shifted down and off to the side, as if listening for something or at least trying to. Finally, he looks into Jonathan’s eyes, mouth grim as he shakes his head. He then corrects Jonathan, ever so quietly, _ “Stalked.” _

They right their clothing with the careful motions of an intuitive stealth and perhaps a touch of awkward guilt. Geoffrey comes to settle beside Jonathan, their backs pressed against the high ridge of ragwort and heather as their rear guard. Their keen eyes search towards the skimming waves that carve a foamy line into the shore. “You see it?” Geoffrey asks, voice barely a whisper. He does not point, does not need to.

Jonathan swallows, not understanding entirely, the fear weaving and wrapping around his nerves like tiny tourniquets against his resolve. “Of course I do.”

No more than twenty-five metres away lies a flattened, narrow shape. Jonathan cannot quite tell the length of it, standing out in its own strange way from the surrounding blackness. A dark scab set along the ashen sand of the shoreline. It seems to slowly pulse, very faintly. With that, Jonathan thrusts out his preternatural senses to hear a fairly regular heartbeat. What would be considered regular for a human, that is. A slick, almost viscid sheen covers the body, except for where there appears to be short, wetted-down bristles coating the length of it. Fur, or something much like it, growing in coverage further along towards this thing’s ocean-aimed end. Perhaps too, to Jonathan, the fur slightly resembles the fine, downy feathers you’d find along the neck and chest of a water fowl, damp and ruffled. Jonathan supposes he is seeking out a familiarity in what he cannot personally comprehend.

It has been breathing, shallow, slow. Nearly imperceptible, conceivably knowing – with the same self-consciousness that had gripped Jonathan and Geoffrey – that it, too, is being watched.

_ Stalked,  _ Geoffrey had said.

Jonathan continues to study the creature – because surely that  _ is _ what it is – all while refusing to think of he and Geoffrey as any sort of potential prey. The creature remains stationary and still, save for the pulsing of its slight mass, like some sort of marine stranding, setting itself mysteriously ashore for either a slow, suffocating death or interventive rescue by human hand and rolling wave. Jonathan can understand that self-denial.

In all of this, he comes to the realisation the curious “song” has gone silent.

The body rolls slightly to one side, revealing a matted hank of hair, clumped in dark tendrils that fall down its back like knotted wrack. What appears to be an arm-like appendage, long and bony, gropes at the sand. The creature slinks forward– it  _ reaches,  _ with two arms now, like a beckoning embrace as it moves at a slow, straining crawl.

“My God... A person?” Jonathan hears himself ask, a small urgency slipping into his voice as his instinctual want to help those in need kicks in. Is it someone who perhaps nearly drowned during an evening swim? But just then, a tail curls forwards before Jonathan can think further on any sensible course of action. This creature’s tail is finned and easily two metres long, lapping at the beach like a serpent’s tongue tasting the salt of the air. The short fur, Jonathan sees now, is mottled and patchy in places, revealing flesh beneath that appears iridescent upon further movement in the limited moonlight. Jonathan presses his shoulder against Geoffrey. When he receives no reaction from his partner, Jonathan turns his head to see Geoffrey still staring out towards the creature, mouth partially agape, both mesmerised  _ and  _ quite puzzled.

“Tail… No. Those webbed fingers…”

“Geoffrey?”

With two arms in motion, the strange sea-creature continues to heave the length of its body forward like a tremendous slug, leaving a wide furrow along the beach. And indeed, its spindly, ruddy talons  _ are  _ webbed– hands digging into the sand, climbing the smooth surface of it towards them.

Jonathan recalls the war trenches as he peeks over the sandy ridge behind him; the stench a paste of mud, sweat, and blood had made beneath his boots. He knows Geoffrey was not physically touched by that war, but he waged his own throughout London, or wherever else the extended blade of his militia needed to cut during the pandemic and threat of another Disaster. Jonathan himself was hardly stained in the way of a true soldier, but those branded instincts still latch onto him here. Now, an independent war reaches for Geoffrey in Ireland, and yet another still whenever they hear tell of more vile Ekon. Geoffrey rises and Jonathan cannot help but feel as if Geoffrey takes the sure stance of a soldier, even now– with the familiar swagger in the set of his hips and the spread of his feet; a man forever feeling the sour breath of a battle at his back, self-created though it may at times be.

The creature slows to a halt, less than fifteen metres from them, and lets out a horrible, shrill sound. It goes quiet almost as instantly. The awful sound feels like it still echoes between Jonathan’s ears.

_ “Merrow!”  _ Geoffrey bellows. “You are  _ not _ welcome here!”

It is then that they get a full glimpse of the curious sea-creature’s grotesque face as it lifts its head up towards them.

Jonathan has never seen anything like it, perhaps not even in his most disturbing of nightmares. The blue of the fading night casts an even more corpse-like hue against the congealed appearance of the “merrow’s” shiny flesh. Jonathan watches the creature’s shallow jaw hinge itself closed in a horrifyingly unnatural, jerking fashion; a smiling mouth still set in half-scream, filled with a cage of hundreds of needle teeth that stretches across most of its oblong face. It too, has fangs of its own– thin protrusions that jut from the center of the merrow’s lower mandible, nearly reaching over the place where a nose should be. And its wet eyes… faintly reflective like a cat’s– or an owl. Such unseeing, blackened orbs that still somehow remain exceptionally piercing and inquisitive in their wide, gaping stare.

“More welcome than you– much, much more. The garden is not where you belong,  _ hunter. _ ”The creature’s voice is a crisp, sharp whisper which does not at all match the ghastly maw it is spoken from. The voice also holds a feminine softness that's been oddly gnarled by something other than time. “The sea,” she starts again, shoulders hunched inwards as if preparing to pounce with each word. “I could make a home for you and your friend there, though.” The long, fluked tail twitches, flicks against the sand again, and the glee Jonathan hears in the merrow’s words make his stomach twist.

Whatever this thing is, he will fight it off if it so comes to that; Jonathan has destroyed worse beasts, even stranger beings. Geoffrey seems to already have that in mind when he steps in front of Jonathan as Jonathan gets to his feet.

“I'll amend what I said then,” Geoffrey nods to her, “and tell you, you are not welcome to  _ him. _ S’go back from whence you came, 'fore I leave you in an awful, bleedin’ state and scatter the pieces for the morning gulls!”

That hideous mouth stretches wide once more, Jonathan seeing the full yawn of the merrow’s face splitting open. She sways as she rises up onto her webbed hands, barbed elbows crooked at sharp angles towards the sky.

“My crossbow,” Geoffrey says in a frustrated panic. “Where’s my goddamned crossbow?” He spins and pushes Jonathan backwards with a hand pressed to his chest.  _ “Back up! _ She’s already reached into your mind, Reid. That song of hers!” 

But while Geoffrey kneels behind him, rifling through Jonathan’s suit jacket laid on the ground and the saddlebag beside it, Jonathan holds firm. There is nothing he can sense in himself that truly feels sullied by whatever distorted melody the creature before them had attempted to lull Jonathan with. He rolls his shirt sleeves up, deciding to let the merrow witness the full extent of the change in his forearms and hands to monstrous claws. The merrow lets out a caterwaul rivaling the shrieks of one thousand cicadas.

There is a sensation as if Jonathan’s brain is being held over a spitfire. Even as Jonathan fights through another attempt the merrow makes at wriggling a hold onto his mind, his vision begins to blur. A growl of pain and anger tears through his chest. Jonathan is just able to make out the creature’s dark form slinking backwards and away at preternatural speed. Geoffrey whirls back around, nearly knocking into Jonathan, to point his crossbow towards the retreating figure, its wail following it to silence.

Once the merrow seems to reach the lace of tide-foam, Geoffrey turns to Jonathan and takes him by the shoulder. “Let’s just feckin’ go, Jon. She is a threat no more. Not now that she understands we are more a danger to her.”

“What on earth was that?”

“Nevermind it. Come on.”

“Nevermind?” Jonathan asks, astounded at Geoffrey’s calm. “You certainly seem well-acquainted with whatever that creature was.”

With a slight shake of his head, Geoffrey sighs. “You’ve heard of the sea-nymphs? Nereids– or selkies of Scotland, perhaps?”

“That… was a  _ mermaid?” _

“Maybe so,” Geoffrey laughs at the connection Jonathan makes, “if they were the sons and daughters of devils, these ones!”

The wind begins picking up, and in the distance, their horses whinny. “Best get back to the inn,” Geoffrey presses. “Ain’t keen on testing the patience of mesmerised horses being ground tied.”

Geoffrey straps his crossbow to his arm properly and gathers up Jonathan's forgotten jacket off the ground, shaking the sand from it. Out of the periphery of Jonathan's vision, he sees a woman walking down the beach, headed in their direction. He feels Geoffrey trying to push his jacket into his hands, but Jonathan’s eyes remain on the woman’s approach.

“–Geoffrey.”

“Oh, Hells…” comes the annoyed reply. “Don’t look ‘er in the eye.”

When Geoffrey makes to bodily guard Jonathan again, Jonathan grabs him by the arm, yanking Geoffrey back and gladly bearing the brunt of his put-upon scowl. “I would greatly appreciate it if you’d stop treating me as if I am some delicate flower, quivering in the wind, who suddenly cannot be left to their own devices in a fight.”

Just as Geoffrey opens his mouth to retort, the woman ends her walk in front of them. However, she doesn’t look at Jonathan or Geoffrey, only continues to stare straight ahead.

“No need to fight,” she says. “With each other, or against me.” And that voice is too familiar to be mere coincidence.

“Right,” Pulling his arm from Jonathan’s hold, Geoffrey takes a step towards the woman. “Against  _ you?  _ I will be the judge of that.”

The woman remains quiet. Though in profile, Jonathan is able to appreciate her striking beauty. Thick, coffee-coloured hair frames her face, cascading in waves to lay across the unusual fur-mantled capelet she wears around her slight shoulders. Scarlet fabric drapes halfway down her back and makes up the drooping hood atop her head. Though it isn’t a terribly cold night – even if Jonathan were still mortal he would not think so – he is surprised all the woman is dressed in otherwise, is a simple, ankle-length slip of white. The pale skin of her face and arms is unmarred by so much as even a freckle, and nearly rivals the transparent pallor of he and Geoffrey’s undead complexions. In the dark, and without seeing her face in full, Jonathan nevertheless feels inexplicably captivated by the woman’s fine features.

She closes her eyes, and before opening them again, the woman tilts her face skyward, breathing in deeply through her nose. “May I ask – I am curious over your defiance and protective ardour, you see –  _ duine muinteartha?” _

Jonathan doesn’t catch the last thing the woman says. Geoffrey scoffs and raises his crossbow at her. “You already  _ know _ that is wrong– know the real answer. For however long you'd been bloody  _ watchin’  _ us, you know.”

It dawns on Jonthan then, that the suspicions crawling at the back of his mind were right: this woman truly is the merrow, but in more…  _ appealing  _ form.

“But you  _ are  _ connected, irrevocably. There is…” The woman’s head cocks to the side, “–a shared blood.”

“Not as you think.” Geoffrey takes another step forward, arm still outstretched towards the merrow’s head.  _ “…Mo leannán.  _ He is…” Something about Geoffrey’s bravado deflates. He looks over his shoulder to Jonathan, then hangs his head as if in shame or guilt.  _ “A chuisle mo chroí.  _ And you cannot take him.”

Jonathan has grown tired of being spoken of as if he is not present; spoken of in a tongue only Geoffrey and the merrow can parse. “I wasn't aware I had no voice in this. I'm sure I can speak perfectly well for myself–”

The merrow smiles, that grin still far too wide to be entirely human. She laughs, a quiet, derisive cackle that only exasperates Jonathan further. “I know what you both are–  _ súmaire!” _

“And what of it then, merrow?” Geoffrey drops his arm and stomps forward. Jonathan lays a hand on Geoffrey’s shoulder, and is thankful he is not shrugged off. “Clearly, we know your true form, as well!  _ Cailleach phiseogach!”  _ Geoffrey spits at the woman’s feet before continuing his tirade in more seething Irish.  _ “Murúch! Deamhnoir!” _

“Such a thrall he is in for  _ you, _ guardsman! I could feel its impressive embrace upon him– both your powers a barricade. Like coal tar to  _ muck  _ through.” The merrow quickly turns her head to spit back at Geoffrey’s boots. She raises her head slowly, cataract-grey eyes set to Jonathan. A sinister smile curls her mouth, distorts her beauty. The merrow’s head quickly snaps forward once more and a shiver runs down Jonathan’s spine.

The bit of warmth from Geoffrey’s palm over Jonathan’s knuckles is welcome. He drops his hand from Geoffrey’s shoulder as he comes to stand beside Jonathan. “I am afraid you are also not of his particular tastes  _ or _ proclivities… in more ways than one.” The crookedness of Geoffrey's grin almost makes Jonathan want to smile, too.

“What is it you wanted of us?” Jonathan calmly asks the merrow, wondering when this strange encounter will be over, and what the point of it is. His fingers itch to check his pocket watch.

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” she replies in a light, brisk manner. “I see now, my error. If you gentlemen would excuse me, I think I'll be on my way… I’ve grown weary. You see, I do not usually find meself conversing at such lengths over meals. Perhaps you wouldn't understand. I have heard the Ekon tend to be… terribly chatty. Plays with their food.”

Jonathan watches Geoffrey glaring down the merrow, and narrows his eyes at her, as well, but with a curiousness. “You’ll leave us be, then?”

“Aye, I will. I must tell you though, _heart of the hunter’s heart,_ _Englishman,”_ she hisses. Jonathan feels his face begin to flush at the way the woman describes him. “You may well find yourself unwelcome ‘round here in the coming month. I would be curious to know your man's loyalty then. But it seems he has already scuffed out those lines drawn elsewhere with you afore.”

“All right, you. Goodnight and a good riddance to yeh.”

The merrow gives Geoffrey a bloodthirsty sneer.

“One night… maybe you both will join my dear  _ brother  _ for dinner... down by the water.”

They allow her to continue on her leisurely stroll, uninterrupted. Agitation still vibrates from Geoffrey as they yet again let her leave.

Departing from the shoreline, Geoffrey remains silently glum while their legs part the waters of lush greenery. A green that still moves Jonathan, despite the shadowy lens he must now view Ireland’s countryside through. Their rented mounts come into view, having not strayed far from where Geoffrey and Jonathan had politely impressed upon them to stay put, only drifting from each other in their errant grazing.

It is only when they have grabbed the reins of their respective horses, steering them back towards one another, that Geoffrey speaks again.

“In Éire, we call them the _ murúch: _ the merrow. Our da used to tell Ian and me not to ever play too close to the waves at night– too dangerous for their darkness. In later years, as an older brother should, it was Ian who’d scare me shitless with the threat of merrows. Takin’ the piss to keep me from showin’ off and swimming out too far when he’d take me down to Bray, or here to Wicklow for the day. Never thought I’d meet a real one.” Geoffrey turns to gaze back out in the direction of Magheramore’s silvered sand. The thin smile on his face falters. “Scattered his ashes here, me an’ Carl Eldritch. Eldritch asked, leaving it up to me at every step.”

“I’m sure it is beyond the pale for me to ask, but… how old were you?”

“Younger than Ian was when our father attacked him, I’ll tell you. When he was changed. Had already been with Eldritch and the Guard for a time when Ian and I met again, miles from Dublin. I thought my brother deserved a peace that was twice so cruelly taken from him at the end of his life, one I was unable to give my parents in  _ their _ deaths. Even if the last blow was by my hand, it ended Ian’s suffering. Maybe it was an apology as well, taking him here after. Likely why our night just went a bit sideways as it did. Suppose it is what I get for tryin’ to bugger a bloodsucker on the same shore, and being one _ myself, _ no less. It’d be justice if a merrow were to lure me into the very waves my brother rests in, and tear me limb from limb. Got no soul left to suck out, though, shame.”

“Perhaps she sensed that of both of us.”

“The guilt we hold for our siblings’ ends, or the damnation we carry? Ah, does it matter…? Took a right shine to you, though. I admire her perseverance.”

“Naturally,” Jonathan chuckles. But something bothers him, about the overbearing behaviour Geoffrey showed in the face of that creature, towards Jonathan. “Geoffrey, while the merrow’s…  _ song  _ had entered my head, however brief or weakly, I was under complete control of myself, you know. I don’t feel there was a need to be so, so overprotective, if I might put it so boldly.”

“Boldly unappreciative, is what I would call you.” Geoffrey sulks over to his horse, puts his back to Jonathan.

“You of all people should know that creature was hardly a threat to me, in any form. Yet you locked me out of your mind, out of your conversation with the merrow when I couldn’t understand half of what you were saying. Worst of all, treating me as if I were one of your green guardsmen. You don’t know the things I have faced after my turning, but you have seen what I can do, have  _ felt  _ it for yourself!”

“Don’t exaggerate. All apologies, Jonny.” Hoisting himself into the saddle, Geoffrey adds in a mocking tone, “Next time, I’ll be sure to just piss on yeh and hope the stink of it drives a banshee or other murderous sod away. God’s blood...”

Jonathan secures their shared saddlebags to his horse’s tack, and mounts up, giving the animal a soothing pat on the neck as it bobs its great head. He can only imagine the fear the merrow’s cries caused the horses. “Will you tell me what it is that was said between you?” They begin trotting along the spread of pastoral fields, Geoffrey taking a small lead.

“If it was necessary for you to know, I would not have said it in  _ Irish!  _ Think… think when we get back to the Glen–” He spares a glance back at Jonathan, as if making certain he is keeping up, or maybe listening. “I’ve a mind for a small walk, by myself. Need to clear my head a bit.”

That doesn’t sit well with Jonathan. Firstly, it is irresponsible, with the dawn approaching and the little cover much of their location in the village of Ashford affords them beyond scattered clusters of trees. If Geoffrey is for some reason angry with him, he could simply stay in the secondary room they’ve rented at the inn, away from Jonathan. 

“Why are you suddenly being this way? You’re more recalcitrant than usual. There are precious little hours left until the sun rises, yet you desire a  _ walk?” _

“Reid, what I desire is  _ you.  _ But you drive me wholly mad, to be sure, so forgive me if I am asking for a solitary moment. I’ve no interest in bedding down in a dark room alone tonight, don’t worry that pretty head of yours. And I’d expect you to think me smarter than to tip my chin to the sun in her full glory. Perhaps as a precaution, you can loan me the clouds of doom and gloom always hangin’ over your head, though.”

“To think, it has only been  _ two years, _ and I’ve an eternity of this to look forward to.”

“An _ eternity? _ Ho!” Geoffrey chokes out the words with heavy amusement. He drives his horse ahead into a swift canter. “Watch it– you’ll give a man cold feet there, Doc!”

Jonathan eventually catches up to Geoffrey to ride in tandem, and the man is still laughing under his breath, barely audible above the soft pound of hooves on the ground. “What is it now?” Jonathan calls out.

“That bitch called me a goddamned leech! _ Súmaire.  _ Tch. Well, the both of us, really.” He flashes a devilish smirk at Jonathan.

Nights such as these are always the kind which make Jonathan truly wonder what his life would have been like had he reined in his spite for Geoffrey after their violent clash at the Pembroke. Nights like these, he tears free from his dismal regrets and clings tighter to whatever uncustomary partnership he has gained with Geoffrey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Parts of the design of my "mermaid"/merrow were inspired by grey seals, the giant moray species of eels, Sloane's viperfish, and the fangtooth fish.
> 
> I'm hoping to have the second part up in the next week or two, but I can't make any promises, as I've got a couple things I need to start/finish this month! But hopefully, it will be soon.
> 
> Irish translations:
> 
> Duine muinteartha - loved one/kin  
> Mo leannán - my lover  
> A chuisle mo chroi - my heart’s beloved  
> Súmaire - leech/vampire  
> Cailleach phiseogach - sorceress/witch/charm-worker  
> Deamhnoir - conjurer

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Comments/feedback & kudos are my fuel<3


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